EU leaders to lock horns over treaty and expansion
By Honor Mahony
EU leaders will today gather in Brussels to conduct some high-level head-scratching over the bloc's constitution after an official year of reflection produced much thought but few answers.
It is unlikely the uneasy status quo - in existence since French and Dutch voters rejected the text last summer - will be changed just one short year later.
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Instead EU leaders will try to agree a text that offends none of the prominent country's positions on the document.
And there are several schools of thought, including pushing ahead with ratification anyway, making cosmetic changes to the document, making substantial changes to it, cherry-picking the best bits, or abandoning it altogether.
The likely outcome of the summit then, already pointed to by EU foreign ministers at a meeting late last month, will be an extension of the "reflection period."
This would effectively shelve the matter until this time next year by which time the German EU presidency is expected to have come up with some concrete proposals.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for a key role at the summit to save the constitution, and is set to suggest an extraordinary summit on the issue in March next year, for the 50-year anniversary of the EU.
A recent Franco-German proposal puts concrete decisions to be taken in 2008 and an actual result pencilled in for 2009.
By this time, the political slate would be wiped clean in that both France and the Netherlands are likely to have new leaders.
In any case, some inter-governmental bargaining is around the corner as the EU will need to revise voting weights and seats in the parliament for when Croatia joins in 2009. There is also the thorny issue of no longer having one commissioner per country, which under the current Nice treaty will be scrapped at that point.
But these and other important questions on the future of the bloc are likely to be saved by member states until a later, eleventh hour date, when the EU has a tighter deadline pushing it to take action.
That enlargement question
The constitution will not be the only area where there is a political wrangle to tease out the delicate wording. Any statements on enlargement will also be the result of fraught discussion.
Emotions are running high on the issue with member states currently split between those who want to put a brake on enlargement – including France and the Netherlands – and those who are in favour of continued expansion – broadly the new member states and the UK.
The discussion is likely to centre around how much the EU's own state of health should be taken into account when considering whether new member states should join the bloc.
Going under the term "absorption capacity" - several member states fear this will mean a new way of stopping countries entering the EU, particularly as it is a criterion over which they have no influence.
Meanwhile, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia, are expected to get some signals about their pending membership of the bloc – with a political nod likely towards 2007 and 2009/10 respectively.
Ukraine is set to feature once again with Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia all to push for a "European perspective" for the country while foreign ministers on Thursday evening will discuss Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo.
Energy, transparency and possibly football
Other topics on Thursday's agenda include energy where national governments' differing approaches to the energy supply giant, Russia, is likely to be one of the discussion areas.
The EU's foreign policy representation will also feature. The commission tabled a paper in the run up to the summit proposing a more integrated role for the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and suggesting a type of EU diplomatic service, something that also appears in the EU constitution.
Other topics that are likely to appear include the parliament's campaign to have its Strasbourg seat scrapped - the issue is to be raised by Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende on Thursday, and Lithuania's annoyance at the criteria for joining the euro, which recently led to its eurozone bid being rejected and Slovenia's accepted.
Transparency may get a look-in with the Austrian presidency fighting to ensure more open law-making in the EU. However, the UK has suddenly spoken out against the move arguing it would move real decision-making to the fringes of meetings.
As nobody wants to be seen as speaking out against transparency, London has so far received little public support for its u-turn.
Meanwhile, away from the political pitch and onto the sports pitch, two World Cup football matches may provide some welcome relief on Thursday evening.
England is due to play Trinidad and Tobago at 6 pm while Sweden plays Paraguay at 9 pm Brussels time.