Sarkozy plots with Berlin to salvage constitution

By Simon Taylor

Date: 06/04/06

Leading German politicians accept that the EU constitution is dead in its current form and are prepared to ditch the Charter of Fundamental Rights in order to salvage as much of the text as possible, according to a close ally of Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading French presidential contender.

Alain Lamassoure, the French centre-right MEP, who is Sarkozy's informal adviser on EU affairs, told European Voice: "Everyone knows that the draft constitution will never be applied."

According to Lamassoure, Sarkozy believes that a new treaty should be "smaller, dealing with the essential constitutional issues", such as an EU foreign minister and a permanent Council president. "Privately, the Germans agree," he said. Lamassoure added that a slimmed-down treaty, which could be adopted in 2008, could then be ratified by the French parliament without the need for a new referendum.

A new treaty, focusing on the reforms needed to ensure that the Union functions effectively with 27 or more members, would not have to include the Charter of Fundamental Rights, Lamassoure said. "We don't need the charter for the Union to function," he explained.

While the previous SPD-Green German government argued strongly for incorporating the charter into the constitution, there are doubts, especially in Christian Democrat quarters, about the charter impinging on German constitutional law.

The German Socialist MEP Jo Leinen said he could not see his centre-left SPD party, which is a member of the governing coalition, giving up the charter. "It is something you can show to citizens," he stressed.

Lamassoure said that some elements of the third part of the constitution, which consolidates previous treaties in a single text as well as setting out how certain innovations in the constitution would work in practice, would have to be included even in a reduced treaty.

Meanwhile, a majority of members of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) wants the process of ratifying the current constitution text to continue.

At the EPP congress in Rome last week (30-31 March), delegates voted overwhelmingly to continue ratifying the constitution.

Lamassoure, whom Sarkozy wants to attend the EPP summits, held before formal gatherings of EU leaders, said that he hoped that as many as 20 member states approved the existing text. "The more countries which have ratified, the more the new text would resemble the constitution," he said. Estonia and Finland are expected to approve it before the summer, taking the number of countries which have ratified to 16.

Asked what would happen if the UK and other countries still failed to approve the new treaty, he said that provided the six founding EU members had given their approval, there could be a treaty among the 20 states which had ratified the constitution.

The comments by Lamassoure closely reflect the thinking on the constitution of Sarkozy, the right's strongest candidate to take over from President Jacques Chirac in 2007, in particular on how to respond to the 'No' vote in a French referendum in May 2005. Sarkozy said in a recent speech: "I will not be the one to say to the French people that they had misunderstood the question being asked them [in the referendum]."

A German government official said it was "much too early" to start reflection on how to "square the circle" of the rejection of the constitution by French and Dutch voters and the large consensus supporting the substance of the current text.

Article reports that according to a close ally of Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading French presidential contender, leading German and French politicians accepted that the EU constitution was dead in its current form and were discussing plans how to salvage as much of the text as possible.

• Primary Source

European Commission: A Constitution for Europe http://europa.eu/constitution/index_en.htm

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