Merkel rejects ideas to restart constitution talks

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected a number of new ideas for restarting stalled negotiations on the EU constitution.

Her comments will lower expectations that Germany’s presidency of the Council of Ministers, which begins in January, might deliver a major breakthrough in plans for EU treaty reform.

Speaking in Berlin at the 10th International Bertelsmann Forum last week (22 September), Merkel said that she was against ‘cherry-picking’ or stripping out parts of the constitutional treaty, and leaving other parts of the treaty "lying somewhere".

In particular, she stressed that the charter of fundamental rights, which is made legally binding by the EU constitution, was "very, very important". Her comments were interpreted by some of her audience as a rejection of the call earlier in September by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister and leading presidential candidate, for a mini-treaty which could be ratified by parliament and would not have to undergo another referendum in France following the rejection of the constitution in May 2005.

Merkel also said she was "sceptical" about plans for a new committee of wise men to work on which parts of the constitutions to save or modify, saying that the problem about how to revive the constitution was "political", not a technical drafting exercise. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has proposed a new group of experts including many of the leading members of the convention which drafted the first version of the constitution. They include former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato, former Belgian prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, Otto Schily, the former and current German interior minister and Wolfgang Schaüble, former French ministers Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Michel Barnier, former Dutch prime minister Wim Kok, former commissioner Chris Patten, former Finnish prime minister Paavo Lipponen, Spanish MEP Iñigo Mendez de Vigo and Commissioners Margot Wallström and Danuta Hübner.

Merkel also said that despite the misgivings of several countries, she thought the name "constitutional treaty" was "not so bad".

The Chancellor said that Germany would produce a plan or a concept of how to proceed with the constitution by the end of its presidency but not earlier, because of the timing of elections next year - a clear reference to the French presidential polls in April and May next year.

Also speaking at the forum in Berlin, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said that there should not be any further enlargement of the EU unless there was agreement on institutional changes. A Commission official said his comments were intended to put pressure on countries like Germany which strongly support Croatia’s membership of the EU to agree to treaty reform by 2009. He stressed that Barroso had no desire to delay Zagreb’s membership bid.

Merkel said that the EU should make no new commitments on enlargement apart from countries in the Balkans but confirmed that the EU needed to agree institutional reform by 2009 at the latest.

She also highlighted other priorities for her presidency, including strengthening relations with Russia and boosting the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy to improve co-operation with countries which border the EU but which have no chance of becoming full members.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected a number of new ideas for restarting stalled negotiations on the EU constitution.

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