May 26, 2003	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 23,1424

BRUSSELS: EU elders are to present the latest draft of a new constitution on Monday (today), notably omitting the “F” word as haggling over the bloc’s future legal blueprint goes down to the wire.

“Federalist” has failed to make the cut in the text being thrashed out by former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who is working against the clock ahead of an EU summit in Greece next month.

But while some progress has been made on that particular semantic row, the broader questions of who will wield power in the future EU — set to expand to 25 members next year — are far from resolved, officials admit.

“It would have been a miracle if we had found the magic solution in three days,” said a spokesman for Giscard, head of the 105-member Convention on the Future of Europe which meets again later this week.

He was speaking after an intensive three-day session ending Friday of the inner-core leadership of the convention, which has been working for over a year to prepare the framework for the enlarged bloc.

The talks made progress on many issues, and will present new drafts of large parts of the constitution on Monday.

But the key sticking points remain: the institutional set-up of the bloc, including plans for a new full-time EU president to head the Council of Ministers, and a new EU foreign minister.

Heated debate over the EU presidential plans has raged for weeks, with the patrician Giscard accused of behaving like an “emperor” for sticking by his proposals despite widespread criticism, notably from the EU’s smaller states.

EU heavyweights like France and Britain support the plans to replace the current musical-chairs rotating presidency, under which a different country holds the EU reins every six months, with a permanent chairman-style president.

But the smaller countries, joined notably by the European Commission, fear the plans would only strengthen the domination of the major states in EU decision-making.

The divisions are far from limited to simply big countries versus small ones: Britain, for example, is opposed to the term “EU foreign minister” - for which Germany’s Joschka Fischer is already hotly tipped.

The EU’s name has also been on the table, although the latest reports suggest that radical suggestions like “The United States of Europe” have not garnered widespread support.

The row over “federalism” has seen fierce sparks fly. Britain’s eurosceptics notably took exception, and the word was removed after Giscard held talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London on Monday.

While toning down the federalist language, the latest draft on the other hand explicitly proposes beefing up joint management of economic policy for the inner core of countries using the euro.

This is likely to raise eyebrows in Britain, whose government is currently agonizing over whether and when to hold a referendum on joining Europe’s single currency.—AFP