Drawing up constitutional limits

The German presidency of the EU is asking other member states to identify what will be their ‘red line’ issues when the constitution is renegotiated in the second half of this year.

The administration in Berlin has sent to the other national capitals a one-page questionnaire asking a dozen questions to see what changes they could accept in the constitution.

The questionnaire is designed to give the presidency guidance on member states’ positions ahead of a series of bilateral consultations with leaders’ top EU affairs advisors which is due to start next week. The German presidency wants to identify which areas an intergovernmental conference (IGC), to start under the Portuguese presidency in July, would need to address. Berlin wants the number of areas to be as limited as possible so that the IGC can be wrapped up by the end of the year and a new treaty can be ratified and in place by 2009.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is reluctant to give in to demands from the Polish government to revise the voting weights agreed as part of the constitution. But diplomats believe that if Warsaw maintains its insistence on rejigging the votes it could be offered a concession on the voting system or extra guarantees on energy solidarity whereby other member states would help out if Russia cut off energy supplies.

Merkel saw Czech President Václav Klaus in Berlin on Wednesday (18 April) to try to soften his opposition to renegotiating the constitution.

While Poland and the Czech Republic are often cast as the most difficult governments on the constitution, EU diplomats are expressing growing concern about the UK government’s insistence on minimal treaty changes to avoid a referendum.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair met his Dutch counterpart Jan Peter Balkenende in London on Monday (16 April) to discuss the fate of the constitution.

Blair and Balkenende stressed that they wanted to drop the ambition of having a constitution, calling instead for an "amending treaty". Blair said it was important to "go back to the idea of a conventional treaty where the idea is to make Europe more effective because we now have a Europe of 27 rather than 15". Both prime ministers also stated that it would not be enough simply to drop the name "constitution".

"There is all the difference in the world between a constitutional treaty that is an attempt to consolidate, to write all the rules of the European Union to give rise to a whole set of legal principles and an amending treaty within the tradition of existing European treaties," said Blair.

Both governments want to avoid being forced to hold a referendum on a new treaty for fear of it being rejected by voters, for the second time in the Netherlands’ case.

But diplomats are expressing concern that the UK’s lengthy list of ‘red lines’ could make it difficult to find consensus among EU governments. The UK wants only minimal treaty amendments and wants the Charter of Fundamental Rights downgraded from being an integral part of the text. It is also opposed to keeping the title of European foreign minister, arguing that this makes the EU sound too much like a government.

Diplomats fear also that the UK might try to limit the scope of treaty change to purely the institutional innovations contained in Part I of the constitution such as ending the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council.

Germany wants to agree the outline framework of a new treaty at the final summit meeting under its presidency in June, including defining the scope of the IGC to be limited to as few subjects as possible.

This will be Blair’s last summit as UK prime minister before finance minister Gordon Brown takes over. Diplomats hope that Blair, who will be thinking of his EU legacy, will show sufficient flexibility in June to pave the way for a quick agreement on a new treaty. Brown could then deflect any criticism of concessions made as Blair’s fault. But the prospect of a nominally less EU-enthusiastic occupant of the UK’s seat at summits is worrying diplomats, not least because they are unclear whether Brown would prefer to get treaty negotiations well out of the way before he faces an election in 2009 or would try to link institutional reform to an overhaul of farm support and spending policies.

The German presidency of the EU is asking other member states to identify what will be their ‘red line’ issues when the constitution is renegotiated in the second half of this year.