Resurrecting the European Constitution

Written by Andrew Duff MEP and published in ft.com on Tue 30th Jan 2007

It was a risky move. Spain and Luxembourg, the only two countries to have ratified the European constitution by referendum, summoned the other 16 yes-sayers to Madrid last week to vent their frustration.

They all came at the level of junior Europe minister, with the notable exception of Germany, the current holder of the EU presidency, which sent its ambassador to Spain. Two other potential Yes countries, Ireland and Portugal, were also represented.

The meeting, whose convening the Germans deplored, could have gone horribly wrong, both by accentuating the division within the EU between the Yeses and the Noes and, worse, by exposing a large division in the Yes camp about what on earth it should do next to get Europe out of its prolonged constitutional crisis.

A 'constitution plus'

In the event, the Spanish seem to have steered their colleagues away from the simplistic talk, championed by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French presidential hopeful, of a dissected 'mini-treaty' towards the nobler concept of a 'constitution plus'.

Nothing dangerously specific came out of the meeting, and a follow-up event in Luxembourg has been cancelled. The German presidency, can feel relieved. The likelihood increases that, come the critical European Council in June, Germany will propose a judicious renegotiation of the 2004 constitutional treaty with an eye to its modest but significant improvement.

While we await the outcome of the French presidential elections in May, it would be wrong to neglect developments in the other two rejectionist states, Britain and Holland.

The UK now has three positions on the EU constitution. Tony Blair, prime minister, who wants to leave office after the June summit with his tattered European record somewhat repaired, will go where Germany wants. Geoff Hoon, the minister for Europe, prefers a new treaty - one rather more teeny than mini, while Gordon Brown, chancellor, wants to improve on Mr Blair's performance on the European stage. Of the three, the rest of Europe can hope, at least, that it is Mr Hoon who loses out.

In the Netherlands, things are even more tricky. Jan Peter Balkenende is fixing his fourth administration - yet another grand coalition of pro-EU Christian and social democrats, plus a small party of anti-EU Christian zealots.

Domestic debate

The dangerous thing is that the Dutch debate is almost entirely domestic in its preoccupations and, like Britain's, isolated from the European mainstream. When the new government in The Hague comes to answer the German presidency's questions about what in the 2004 text it would like to change, there are likely to be some rather silly answers. Many Dutch MPs voice their dislike for the symbols of the EU (flag, motto, anthem, Europe Day). They also reject the official Dutch name for the treaty - grondwet - because of its historic association with state sovereignty. (One may well ask why they did not call it constitutie in the first place.)

Too many Dutch MPs are also keen on using the principle of subsidiarity as a pretext for stopping things happening at EU level. Not one of the ostensibly pro-EU parties in the Netherlands shows itself capable of campaigning for the step forward in Europe's political integration that the constitution represents. Instead, old-fashioned Dutch nationalism and deep conservatism is dressed up in woeful, post-modernist jargon. The other Holland - urbane, progressive, internationalist - has few champions at the moment.

My hunch is that numbers 26 and 27 in the lineup to ratify the eventual constitution will be Britain and Holland, blinking at each other warily through the North Sea fog.