Europe awaits with bated breath

IS it a sinister political Da Vinci Code designed to undermine our freedoms or a worthy but dull attempt to modernise the EU?

Short of arranging for Elvis to emerge from a UFO riding Shergar and boasting of his part in the JFK assassination, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, chairman of the convention which drew-up the doomed EU constitution, could hardly have delighted conspiracy theorists more than with his comments that the constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters is reborn in Lisbon: “Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly... All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be disguised in some way.”

Not surprisingly, Green leader and Environment Minister John Gormley puts a more positive spin on the document as he urges voters to dwell on what the Lisbon treaty will do for them: “Concentrate on the merits of this treaty, the charter of fundamental rights, the democratisation of the European Union and the commitment to environmental issues,” he said.