Tortuous road to European constitution

With a weekend deadline looming, European foreign ministers made little progress today in resolving major differences on a first-ever EU constitution between countries seeking greater integration and those who fear a superstate.

That means EU leaders will have to wrestle with the differences during their summit which begins on Friday.

“What we have left over now are the most serious issues for leaders,” said French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.

The constitution is meant to streamline decision-making and reshape EU institutions to avoid gridlock after the 15-nation bloc takes in 10 new members, mainly from eastern Europe, on May 1. It must be adopted unanimously.

Despite two months of work, the remaining deep divisions were highlighted today as foreign ministers haggled over how to bolster the EU’s defence policy without endangering security ties with the United States in Nato or trampling on some countries’ cherished neutrality.

In an eleventh-hour appeal, neutral EU nations Sweden, Ireland, Finland and Austria objected strongly to a proposed mutual defence pledge, similar to Nato’s, stating that if one EU member is attacked, the others are obliged to provide assistance.

In a joint letter, the four said “formal binding security guarantees would be inconsistent with our security policy or with our constitutional requirements.” They demanded the formal obligations be dropped.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who chaired the Brussels meeting, said he would redraft the clause to reflect their concerns.

But de Villepin warned Frattini not to water it down, suggesting an “opt-out” for the neutrals instead. “The solidarity as expressed in this clause must not be downgraded,” he said.

Concerns also remain about how the bloc will make common decisions on foreign policy, with small nations worried about ceding power to larger ones.

Those issues will be added to a pile of others that are likely to push the two-day summit into overtime.

They range from whether the constitution should include a reference to God or Christianity to how many commissioners EU countries should sent to Brussels.

“Let’s hope that positions and spirits will change” to get a deal, said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Lydie Polfer.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said “a bad deal was not an option,” suggesting Germany would hold fast in defending the draft’s call for greater integration against those afraid of ceding too much power to Brussels.

“We need a decision that will ready the EU for the challenges,” he said.

Fischer’s French counterpart agreed. “If ambitions are not high enough, maybe we should give ourselves more time,” de Villepin said. “We cannot accept a text which is not ambitious.”

The largest threat to a final constitution deal are proposals to overhaul the EU’s voting system.

Poland and Spain are insisting the EU stick to a 2000 deal struck in Nice, that gave them 27 votes in EU decision-making, almost equal to much more populous nations such as Britain, France, Germany and Italy, which got 29 votes.

The draft constitution suggest decisions be adopted if at least half the EU states, representing 60% of the bloc’s population, are in favour.

At today’s meeting, Poland’s European Affairs Minister, Danuta Huebner, said Warsaw “had not changed its position.”

If EU nations manage to adopt a constitution, it will have to be ratified by parliaments and referendums, with the aim of having the new charter take effect starting on January 1, 2005.

The 10 states joining the EU in May are Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta and the Czech Republic.