PRAGUE: Small EU states and members-in-waiting are making battle plans ahead of a meeting in Rome in October where a contentious constitution for the bigger, 25-member bloc is due to be finalized.

Officials from 15 countries are meeting in Prague on Monday to form a united front and push for changes to a draft text tabled by former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, which they feel favour EU heavyweights like France, Britain and Germany.

“The countries who have similar positions will try to coordinate themselves so as not to appear scattered,” Portuguese foreign ministry spokesman Fernando Lima explained Friday as he confirmed his country would attend.

The Czechs are the nominal hosts of Monday’s meeting but the Austrians, who want more solidarity among small EU countries, worked hard behind the scenes to organise it, diplomats said.

The meeting poses a headache for the leading EU nations who support Giscard d’Estaing’s hard-won compromise text and do not want to go back to the drawing board after 18 months of haggling.

During a visit to the Czech Republic on Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer sternly told smaller states to accept the blueprint.

“It is a good compromise because nobody likes it but everybody can live with it,” said the minister, who wants the inter-governmental conference (IGC) in Rome to adopt the text almost as is.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said in Brussels on Wednesday that his government would ask for only small adjustments while Giscard d’Estaing has warned that to re-open negotiations would be to “tear Europe apart”.

It seems unlikely the small EU members and mostly ex-communist states due to join the bloc in May 2004 will heed their advice.

They notably oppose replacing the EU’s rotating presidency with a more permanent president and reducing the number of EU commissioners to 15 just as membership is set to expand to 25.

The states are do not want to see individual governments’ rights to veto legislation reduced.

“If we cannot re-open the matter, there is no point in having an IGC. We could just have a one-day meeting to ratify the text,” Czech Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda said on Tuesday.

Estonia’s representative to the EU Convention, Henrik Hololei, on Friday declared that it was “unacceptable to leave the draft constitution treaty untouched.”

Estonia’s foreign ministry added that the Baltic state hoped the Prague meeting would “contribute to make the IGC more constructive.”

But the Czechs are wary of the big nations’ wrath and have tried to downplay the significance of Monday’s meeting.

Foreign ministry spokesman Karel Boruvka described it as a “discussion forum”, stressing that countries will be represented by their deputy foreign ministers and that they will not draft any proposals.

But diplomats from the countries invited say a text is already being drafted to list the main points of the constitution they want the IGC to revisit.

It is partly an attempt to limit their demands to avoid deadlock and failure in Rome.

This is not an easy task, because the smaller countries are divided among themselves.

The EU’s two smallest members-in-waiting, Cyprus and Malta, were not invited.—AFP