France's Constitutional Council ruled on Thursday that the EU's budget responsibility pact did not require a change to the constitution, easing its path to ratification and removing a potential headache for President Francois Hollande. The court's ruling opens the way for Hollande's Socialist government, which had insisted it did not want to write a budgetary rule into the constitution, to implement the pact as soon as September using a "super-law" that requires only a simple majority in parliament. A constitutional reform would have required a three-fifths majority in a special joint session of parliament and could ... (full story)