The European Union convention prepared to open its final session today hopeful of completing a draft constitution to present to EU leaders next week.
"I think the convention's deliberations will be able to be completed this week," said a spokesman for convention chairman Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who has weathered a storm of criticism in recent weeks.
The 105-member convention, which has been working since February 2002, has struggled to resolve fundamental differences over how the EU should be run after it expands from 15 to 25 members next year.
Its work is due to be completed in time to be handed to EU heads of government at their summit near Salonika, northern Greece, on June 20th and 21st.
Germany and France, which have traditionally driven the European project, have called for the package of proposals to be pushed through in full at the summit.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said after talks in Berlin yesterday with French President Jacques Chirac that their countries were "determined to support this (draft) constitution without reservation".
Mr Giscard d'Estaing, a former French president, announced last week that he had found a "basis for a consensus" on the future shape of the EU after tough haggling among the conventioneers.
The proposals, which would take effect in 2009, include replacing the EU's rotating leadership with a full-time "chairman".
The pay-off for smaller member states, which fear a power grab by their bigger partners, was a compromise proposal for the European Commission to continuing representing every EU country.
The EU's executive arm would have 15 voting commissioners and 10 non-voting ones after the bloc's enlargement. The representation would rotate periodically, so that each member state would have a voting commissioner for 10 out of every 15 years.
AFP