CZECH REPUBLIC: The Czech government will push for a referendum on Europe's first constitution in a bid to foil opposition parties threatening to block the treaty in parliament, the Foreign Minister, Mr Cyril Svoboda, said.
Mr Svoboda said there was a strong will in Europe to agree on the constitution, adding that Poland and Spain would have to renounce demands to keep disproportionate voting power in the Union.
European leaders began negotiating the draft on Saturday.
"We will have to go the referendum way," Mr Svoboda said late on Tuesday. "It is absolutely clear that we will have to ask the citizens. They are wiser than the opposition," he said.
The treaty, prepared by a Convention of national and EU politicians, aims to streamline the EU when it expands by 10 countries to 25 next May. The Czechs are among the new members.
But the Czech three-party government led by the Prime Minister, Mr Vladimir Spidla, of the Social Democrats would have trouble pushing the treaty through parliament if the opposition from centre-right Civic Democrats and the Communists holds firm. The government has at best 101 votes in the 200-seat lower house, but needs 120 to ratify international treaties.
The government will have a tough job getting the referendum approved the way it wants. Mr Svoboda said it wanted to push through a general, constitutional law on referendums but the Civic Democrats oppose the idea. The rightist Freedom Union is not in favour of a general law so the government is probably going to seek the support of the Communists.
Hungary is to press for a clause in the draft EU constitution to protect minority rights. The issue is sensitive in Hungary, which has a large Roma, or gypsy, population, but which also has some three million ethnic kin living in neighbouring countries - a legacy of a post-first World War peace treaty.
The Foreign Minister, Mr Laszlo Kovacs, said yesterday that Hungary's four main political parties had agreed a text.
It reads: "The European Union is based on the respect of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law and human rights, including national and ethnic minority rights."
The former French president, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who helped draw up the draft, is against any changes.