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EU Talks on Constitution End in Failure

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By Keith B. Richburg

Washington Post
December 14, 2003


Negotiations on a new European constitution collapsed in acrimony Saturday, with the 25 current and future members of the European Union failing to find a formula to satisfy medium-size countries worried that their voices and votes would be swamped by larger countries in an expanded union. The failure left the EU facing one of the most critical crises of its history and could formalize an already visible split in the organization. Diplomats said several of the founding EU members, including France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, could soon issue a statement saying they were prepared to proceed on their own fast track, with deeper integration and shared policies. French President Jacques Chirac raised the idea of a two-speed Europe immediately after the talks failed. He said a smaller "pioneer group" could go forward on areas of common agreement. "It would be a motor that would set an example," Chirac said. "It will allow Europe to go faster, better." He did not specify policy areas where the core group might move forward.

EU leaders, normally given to diplomatic language and positive "spin," did not try to mask their failure. "It has not been possible to reach agreement on all points," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The meeting could have continued, Blair said, but "there's no point in negotiations going on through the night. It's better to wait and get the right agreement." Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and summit chairman, was equally direct. "Right now, it's just not possible to get an agreement," he said. The meeting could have dragged on, he said, but "we all felt it wasn't the right thing to do at this stage, given that the positions are so far apart." Romano Prodi -- president of the European Commission, the EU's executive body -- said: "Today an agreement was not possible. Now we need to reflect at length and get our ideas sorted out." The collapse of the summit torpedoes, at least for now, European leaders' grand design to have a constitution that would give the continent a new president, legal status and more clout on the global stage. "It's a mess," said Kirsty Hughes, a researcher at the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies. "It is a crisis." The main issue dividing the group was the allocation of votes. Under the current complex system, Spain and Poland, both medium-size countries with about 38 million people, each carries almost the same clout as Germany, with 80 million people, and France, with 60 million. France and Germany were pressing for what they called a more democratic voting system, in which all future EU laws could be passed by a simple majority of the 25 countries, as long as that represented at least 60 percent of the people living in the union. But prime ministers Jose Maria Aznar of Spain and Leszek Miller of Poland refused to agree to any new system that reduced their voting power. Miller attended the conference in a wheelchair and in obvious pain after a helicopter crash. It now falls to Ireland, which takes over the presidency from Italy next month, to determine whether an agreement is possible. The looming deadline is May, when 10 new countries, mostly from formerly communist Eastern Europe, are set to formally join the EU. Some fear that a union of 25 members will prove too unwieldy to operate under the existing voting rules. Berlusconi warned that the calendar now becomes an even greater obstacle to compromise. Spain is facing general elections in March, and all EU countries hold new elections for the European Parliament in June. Irish diplomats said they did not intend to take up the constitutional question until at least March, partly as a way to let tempers cool.

In the meantime, talk of a separate European "pioneer group" moving at a faster pace toward integration -- essentially creating an EU within the EU -- has raised the possibility that the union could be in danger of a decisive split on the eve of its historic eastward expansion. Analysts said, however, that they were uncertain how such a separate group would function in practice, what policy areas it might address and whether it would even be legal under existing EU treaty rules. "I'm not sure how this core Europe group is going to work, but it does worry people," said Daniel Keohane, a researcher at the Center for European Reform in London. "I think the French and Germans always like this Plan B option, to operate outside the EU." Hughes, of the Center for European Policy Studies, said some founding EU members might be thinking that "if this enlarged EU is going to split and not work, we are going to keep our political aims alive" by cooperating independently. Examples of separate cooperation already exist; only 12 EU members now use the common currency, the euro. And an open-borders agreement that allows free travel within the EU originally began with a small core group and still does not include all EU countries. "I don't think it's in Europe's interest to have a two-speed Europe," Berlusconi said. He said that when it does occur, such as with using the euro, it "should be the exception, not the rule." The draft constitution being debated was the product of two years of work by a constitutional convention, headed by a former French president, Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Besides altering the voting system, the draft constitution included changes aimed at making the EU more efficient and giving it more clout on the world stage. Among the proposed changes was the creation of the powerful new post of president, who could meet on the international level with, for example, President Bush, as a representative of the EU. The constitution would also have created a European foreign minister to articulate a common European foreign policy. But since the constitution was part of a package, those changes are now on hold.


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FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.