UK begins offensive against full-blown EU constitution
By Honor Mahony
The UK has already begun its offensive against a full-blown version of the EU constitution in direct response to a call yesterday by Germany to put the talks back on track.
Speaking about getting the re-worked document ready by the 2009 European elections, chancellor Angela Merkel warned that if the constitutional block continued in the EU then it would be an "historic failure" for the bloc.
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In an apparent aside to London - a strong proponent of further enlargement - the chancellor said that taking on new member states would only be possible if the bloc's institutions were reformed.
"Those who are so much in favour of enlargement must know, if at the same time they are sceptical about the constitutional process, that we can not move forward on the present basis," she said.
However, several major British papers - The Financial Times, the Times and the Telegraph - on Thursday carried stories quoting senior British officials as saying that "Europe is not broken" and that its latest major initiatives could be carried out without a new treaty.
"We are taking decisions. You can push through something major like climate change and energy reform with the existing structure," the FT quotes an official as saying.
London is also pushing the idea that any new treaty would have to be modest enough that it would not need to be put to a referendum, with a UK poll considered very likely to end in a "no" vote.
"I do not think it is in Europe's interests to have another round of referenda. We all know what a shock to the system it was to have the French and Dutch votes," said the British official.
"We will not want to hold a referendum in the next couple of years," The Telegraph quoted UK sources in Brussels as saying.
The paper goes on to report that one way around the impasse could be to make only small changes to the Nice Treaty, when Croatia joins the EU.
Issues such as the size of the commission and the number of member states the EU may have could be written into the Zagreb accession document, which would then be ratified by national parliaments to get round Nice Treaty limitations on an EU of 27 states.
But London's efforts to avoid fresh referendums will likely be undone if the socialist contender, Segolene Royal, wins the elections in France.
On a visit to Luxembourg, Ms Royal said she would allow French people to have their say once more on the document after France and the Netherlands rejected the charter in referendums in 2005.
"I want the French people to be consulted once again in a referendum in 2009," said the socialist politician.
Her centre-right rival would fit more in the British camp however. Nicolas Sarkozy has in the past spoken out in favour of a pared down treaty that would only need to be ratified via parliaments.