On Dec. 1, EU leaders in Lisbon celebrated the coming into force of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty. Now they’re fighting over the fine print.

EU institutions scramble for hegemony under the new Lisbon Treaty – By Daniela Weingärtner

This time, José Manuel Barroso is getting ready to play hardball. Having treated EU member states with kid gloves during his first term as commission president – so as not to endanger his reelection – now he wants to show who’s boss.

It was no coincidence that he tailored the 26 commissioner jobs so that three portfolios handle aspects of foreign policy. He had no interest in leaving the 11-figure budgets for development cooperation, humanitarian aid and neighborhood policy to the EU’s new foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton.

For a speech to the European Parliament in late January, Barroso brought along a copy of the Lisbon Treaty. He told lawmakers that, according to Article 17, the commission represents the EU externally, with the single exception of foreign and security policy.

Financial markets are resisting stronger regulation – By Hannes Koch

At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, an increasingly wary economic elite heard calls by politicians for greater government regulation of the financial markets. With the introduction of additional longer-term levies on banks and investors, they would bear a part of the costs their risky transactions have foisted on the general public.

The city of the future made out of plywood: Stagehands build the set for the upper city of Metropolis. Below: The robotic Maria is brought to life.

The reconstructed original version of Fritz Lang’s classic premieres at the 60th Berlin Film Festival – By Jan Kepp

This is something movie enthusiasts have been waiting for, for decades – Fritz Lang’s momentous silent movie vision of the city of the future can at last be enjoyed in its full-length version. This unusual event hinged on the contents of a few rusty film canisters, which contained scenes thought lost forever.

A discovery made by the Argentine film historian Fernando Martín Peña in Buenos Aires two years ago turned out to be a cinematic sensation. In a small, forgotten museum, he found a copy of “Metropolis” from 1927. It was about 25 minutes longer than all the versions screened to date. Before long, it emerged that this copy contained almost all the scenes from the original movie presumed lost: For decades, film scholars and researchers had been scouring the world’s archives for them in vain.

When “Metropolis” premiered on Jan. 10, 1927 at Berlin’s Ufa-Palast, the film was 153 minutes. At the time, the cinematic treatment of a “city of tomorrow” was viewed as the world’s biggest and most expensive movie. The extravagant production swallowed up around five million reichsmarks (equivalent to around €20 million today).