IMPROVE THE PRODUCT TO SAVE THE CONSTITUTION

Written by Andrew Duff and published in ft.com on Tue 13th Jun 2006

One year after the French and Dutch rejected the constitutional treaty, Europe's leaders gather in Brussels (15-16 June) to ponder over the state of the Union. The mood is fairly grim. To date, only thirteen countries (out of the twenty-five needed) have completed all stages of the ratification process; and the most that is anticipated is sixteen. The current Austrian presidency of the European Council has been unable to prepare a cogent response to the problems faced. The European Commission still misses the chance to play its classical, peace-making role.

The heads of government will agree to extend their self-imposed 'period of reflection' until late 2007. They should also sharpen the analysis and quicken the public and parliamentary debates which in some countries, notably the UK, have yet to start. The advantage of procrastination is obvious: by this time next year French President Chirac (certainly) and Dutch prime minister Balkenende (probably) will have departed the political scene. MM Schröder and Berlusconi have already left; MM. Blair and Persson cannot be far behind. Natural wastage among leaders helps Europe come through a bad patch.

Next week's European Council should confirm its commitment to the constitutional process, as the European Parliament has already done. However welcome they may be, as time goes by newcomers to the leaders' club may not feel obliged to take over responsibility for the constitutional treaty signed by their predecessors in October 2004. Now is a good opportunity to coral Mr Marcinkiewicz, the new Polish premier, in a collective affirmation of faith in the EU's constitutional project.

The leaders should strongly resist the temptation to pick the choicest fruits from the 2004 Constitution, destroying its strong internal logic. Such a piecemeal approach to reform would not only destroy the complex consensus behind the package among member states and between the institutions, but also reduce the chance of ever getting the comprehensive deal.

Likewise, the leaders should be deaf to various siren calls to form core groups of certain member states as a way of circumventing the constitutional process for the Union as a whole.

Instead, the European Council must be bold enough to set itself a rendezvous in late 2007 to close the period of reflection with a clear decision about how to modify the Constitution. Privately, everyone knows that the 2004 text cannot come into force unchanged: it is high time for heads of government to acknowledge this publicly, and begin to prepare for its revision.

By December next year the Union has to agree on a mandate for a new treaty-revising Intergovernmental Conference (IGC). This is necessary in any case because of the impending accession of Croatia. But the remit of the IGC should be large enough to effect a salvage operation on the Constitution.

Taken seriously, the period of reflection will conclude that consensus still holds good on most of the purely constitutional elements. This should enable the EU to ring-fence Parts I and II of the 2004 Constitution. Renegotiation of these strictly constitutional parts is either unnecessary (because what we have is good) or undesirable (as the result would almost certainly be worse) or premature (as we do not yet know any better).

The 2004 Constitution does need to be restructured, however, to create a proper hierarchy between the different parts, so that Part III mainly the common policies of the Union becomes distinctly subsidiary to Part I.

In addition, the EU should use the next eighteen months to draft a careful mandate for the renegotiation of Part III. The following topics suggest themselves:

• to strengthen the economic governance of the Union to advance the Lisbon agenda and enhance the autonomy of the eurozone;

• to reform the European social model to make mobility and employability bridge the divide between competitiveness and solidarity;

• to upgrade the fight against climate change, creating a new context for the reform of the common agricultural and energy policies;

• to clarify the process and threshold of enlargement, including neighbourhood policy, creating a new context for the development of common asylum and immigration policies;

• to revise the financial system to produce a fair, transparent and buoyant budget that allows the EU better to match resources and policy objectives.

With such an improved product, designed genuinely to address the legitimate concerns of the citizen as expressed in France, the Netherlands and elsewhere and with a concerted and stronger marketing campaign there would be a fair chance of successful ratification in the course of 2009. Unless the European Council makes a sincere effort to save the constitution, the vital underpinning and refurbishment of the Union may be neglected for a generation.

Andrew Duff's book The Struggle for Europe's Constitution is published by the Federal Trust and I.B. Tauris.