Belgium: Not a Model to Follow

A quote from Charlemagne in The Economist, 27 March 2008

Belgium's linguistic communities pay a high price for sticking together, resorting to fudges that range from the silly to the destructive. Put like that, you can see Belgium's new government not as a relief, but as an awful warning. A political union hatched together by a fractious elite, and answerable only to itself, is not a model for anybody to follow.

Does this mean?

"A political union hatched together by a fractious elite, and answerable only to itself, is not a model for anybody to follow."

Does this mean the "cosmopolitan" Economist sees folly in the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty without a popular vote? And that it now recognizes that the march of the EU - bodes ill for the future of a democratic Europe?