WASHINGTON, May 29 (UPI) -- One year to the day after the French voted No to the draft new constitution for the European Union, the foreign ministers of the 15 EU member states have kicked the ball down the road for another three years.
Meeting outside Vienna, the foreign ministers were supposed to chart a new way ahead for the EU after the year-long "period of reflection" that followed the resounding No votes by the French and then the Dutch voters in two referendums on the constitution. They toyed with the idea of re-branding the document, and calling it a "basic law" (after the German term Grundgesetz) rather than a constitution, although that would be unlikely to fool many voters
The foreign ministers also gave a cool reception to two new ideas. The first was to use an existing majority voting rule to give more power to the EU in judicial and criminal matters, widening the force of EU-wide arrest warrants and boosting the role of the Europol coordination office for the various national police forces. This stalled, in part because of the discreet but determined resistance of several national police forces, including the British, French and Dutch, who have limited faith in the efficiency or probity of some of their counterparts after some unhappy experiences with intelligence-sharing.
The other idea came from EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, the former Portuguese premier who now runs the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. He suggested that while leaving the constitution to one side, all 25 countries might sign a solemn declaration on the EU's common goals and values, to mark next year's 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the EU's founding document.
Again, this met a cool reception, with some foreign ministers saying they saw little point in yet another vague mission statement that had no binding force when there were real practical issues that the EU had to address quickly. This echoes the strongest original argument for the constitution, that a body of 25 (and soon 27 or even 30) nations needed much clearer rules on decision-making than those provided by the existing Treaties that were initially designed for the six founding nations who preferred to operate by consensus.
The constitution that the French and Dutch rejected offered a reasonable rule for decision making. It required not only a majority of the 25 member states to vote for any new rule, but that the individual states voting for the new rule must represent a clear majority of the EU's total population of nearly 500 million.
At some point, the Europeans will probably have to accept that there is no point re-inventing the wheel, and that they should learn from the Americans, who have already resolved this problem in their own constitution. The U.S. Senate gives two seats to each of the 50 American states, and each Congressman in the House of Representatives represents some 700,000 Americans.
The EU already has its own Parliament, which could play the role of the American House, and the European Council which brings together the 25 heads of government, could play the role of the Senate. The problem is that the 25 nation states do not want to give that much power to the European parliament, partly because their known national parliaments do not want to be downgraded to the equivalent of American state legislatures, and partly because the EU Council is now the key decision-making body and the national leaders like it that way.
So the real blockage is that several of the EU member states do not really want the EU to become more powerful, neither in police and judicial matters nor in supra-national decision-making. Nor do several of the crucial electorates, as the Dutch and French proved last year. And all opinion polls agree that the British and the Danes, Swedes, Poles and Czechs are just as reluctant.
Moreover, a new opinion poll commissioned by Britain's Open Europe group and released in time for the foreign minister's weekend meeting found opinion hardening against the constitution, suggesting that a new referendum in France and Holland would go down to a worse defeat than last year.
The poll found 55.5 percent of French voters would vote No today (compared to the 54.5 percent last year) while 65 percent of the Dutch would vote No (up from 61.5 percent last year). And 74 percent of French and 75 percent of Dutch voters say that no parts of the constitution should be implemented unless they are agreed in fresh referendums. (Another poll run by Dutch TV over the weekend found 83 percent saying any new or amended constitution would have to be submitted to a new referendum.)
But the fact remains that a majority of the EU nations, 15 of the 25 countries, have already voted to ratify the ill-fated constitution, including big ones like Germany, Italy and Spain, and Finland is soon likely to make it 16. Most have ratified it by votes in national parliaments, but Spain and Luxembourg voted for it in referendums, which makes it difficult for their national leaders to ignore their voters' will.
The crunch is likely to come early next year, when Germany takes over the EU's rotating Presidency, and does not want to revisit the text of the draft constitution, which took over two years of hard bargaining to agree. Germany wants to get some kind of decision at a summit next June, in time for the scheduled admission of two new members, Bulgaria and Romania, but no deal seems likely.
EU Commission president Barroso told reporters in Austria that "we should keep the constitutional issue alive but avoid any kind of paralysis." On current form, he and Europe will be stuck with both.
