Strong support for pressing on with EU constitution

There is widespread support for cherry-picking key elements of the EU constitution despite the rejection of the text by French and Dutch voters.

A survey of EU politicians, journalists, senior officials, NGOs and business leaders shows widespread support for maintaining core institutional elements of the constitution, such as a single diplomatic service and an EU foreign minister.

And 70 per cent of the respondents said that such a move would not be “undemocratic”, despite the ‘no’ votes.

“Electors rejected for a variety of reasons a complex text, not its constituent elements,” Philippe De Schoutheete, Belgium’s former permanent representative to the EU, told Brussels-based think-tank Friends of Europe.

The survey shows that most experts believe the failed referendums in France and the Netherlands were due to a lack of faith in the EU’s economic programme and the lack of openness within the institutions themselves.

Brussels called for a ‘period of reflection’ on the future of the constitution following the ‘no’ votes, but the Austrian EU presidency is pressing for the issue to be put rapidly back on the agenda.
 
“It would be a mistake to lie down meekly and allow the project of a constitutional treaty to perish, to more or less escort it to the cemetery,” Austrian president Heinz Fischer told MEPs in Strasbourg last month.

However, differences still remain over what form the revived constitution should take.

French presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy has said that some elements of the text could be implemented rapidly as others are renegotiated, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it clear that Berlin will not accept any changes to the original text.

Some member states want the EU constitution in its current form to be buried entirely. 

“The treaty has no chance of being ratified in Poland, either by referendum or by the parliament ratification,” Polish President Lech Kaczynski said on Monday. “We support the idea of a new text.”

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