May 30, 2003	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 27,1424

BRUSSELS: For eurosceptics it is a “blueprint for tyranny” leading to a European superstate. For federalists it is a “superflop” — a failed attempt to override the petty nationalism they say holds Europe back.

But the draft EU constitution now emerging from a Convention on the Future of Europe, chaired by former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, is more like a classic “superfudge”.

As the 105-member forum enters its final three weeks, Giscard’s latest proposals offer concessions to all sides but leave no one totally satisfied.

For a document its architects hope will shape the expanding European Union for the next 50 years, the plan has failed to excite much interest — except in Britain where critics see it as a threat to national identity.

The draft Giscard presents to EU leaders at a summit in Greece on June 20 will be the subject of intense haggling among the 15 current and 10 future member states at a conference due to start in October. A final constitutional treaty will only enter into force if all 25 EU members ratify it.

Britain, fighting off domestic pressure to hold a referendum on the text, insists it merely tidies up existing EU treaties. But this is far more than a housekeeping exercise.

It proposes extending decision-making by a majority of greater than 50 per cent — at the expense of the national veto — to a range of areas including energy, transport, some social policy and fighting organised crime and illegal immigration.

In EU jargon, this is called “communitarization” — a process in which the executive European Commission proposes laws, member states decide by a weighted majority and the European Parliament “co-decides” by voting on the legislation.

BURDEN SHARING: “Even Britain backs the communitarization of justice and home affairs because it thinks this will help, through burden sharing, to reduce the number of asylum seekers and...strengthen EU border controls,” said Heather Grabbe of the London-based Centre for European Reform.

The European Parliament would receive new co-decision powers in many new areas, including parts of agriculture, which account for nearly half of the EU’s 95 billion euro budget.

The draft makes clear EU law takes precedence over national laws in all areas where Brussels has powers to act. This may irk eurosceptics, but it is not new. It is a founding principle of the EU.

The constitution’s preamble is set to retain from previous treaties the aim of “ever closer union” among member states. The draft proposes an EU foreign minister, who would report mainly to member states while having a seat on the European Commission, the EU’s supranational executive.

It also provides for a longer term chairman for the 12 euro zone countries, the possible creation of a European public prosecutor and the option of a mutual defence clause which Britain fears could undermine NATO.

For the first time, the EU would have a legal personality — which means it would be able to sign international treaties.

“This draft constitution aims at total centralization in Brussels,” said Jens-Peter Bonde, a Danish eurosceptic member of the European Parliament and of the Convention.

PRIMACY OF NATION STATE: And yet European Commission President Romano Prodi has said the draft is “in some respects a step backwards” while British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has praised it as “a stable rule book setting out clearly the primacy of nation states”.

The text ring-fences sensitive areas of national sovereignty such as taxation and foreign and security policy by insisting on decisions by unanimity.

For the first time, it provides for the active involvement of national parliaments in monitoring and even blocking Commission proposals deemed to go too far.

Giscard, strongly backed by Britain, France and Spain, has capped the number of commissioners in the EU executive at 15 and insists on a long-term president of the European Council, the supreme body grouping national governments.

Critics see this as a bid to weaken the Commission and allow the “big six” — Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland — to dominate EU decision-making.

“This will exacerbate the split between the big and the small countries. Giscard is not fulfilling his role as (neutral) chairman,” said Kirsty Hughes, a pro-integrationist expert at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies.—Reuters