GERMANY: The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, has warned the EU would be thrown into chaos by "undoing" the draft constitution in the coming months.
Mr Fischer's warning comes as representatives of 17 candidate countries and smaller EU member-states, including Ireland, meet in Prague next Monday to discuss the draft constitution.
"Anyone who opens new negotiations has the obligation to reach a new consensus otherwise we face a terrible situation," said Mr Fischer in Prague yesterday. He called the constitution a "successful compromise" that "everyone could live with and no one was happy with".
Failing to agree on the draft at the Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) in Rome "would mean one of the deepest crises for the EU", he said, responding to remarks from politicians in Finland and the Czech Republic who are unhappy with the current draft.
The Czech Foreign Minister, Mr Cyril Svoboda, said the constitution still had "points for discussion". "If nothing were to be opened up, then it should not be necessary to hold the \ conference at all," said Mr Svoboda. He will host a conference in Prague next Monday for 17 smaller EU member-states and candidate countries to discuss the draft constitution and ways of increasing their influence on EU affairs.
Ireland will be represented by the Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Dick Roche TD. He will be there in a "listening mode", according to a spokesman at the Department of Foreign Affairs. It is understood Mr Roche will not raise any of Ireland's concerns about the draft, but will listen to the concerns of others and warn against "unpicking" the document.
Mr Joschka Fischer has warned against reworking the draft several times over the last weeks and said yesterday that he had "no problem" with the upcoming Prague conference. However, he added that "enlargement and the constitution are two sides of the same European coin. We should try to do everything for a consensus".
The Finnish Prime Minister, Mr Matti Vanhanen, said he will unveil changes on Friday that he would like made to the draft at the IGC which takes place in Rome in October.
Mr Vanhanen said Finland would not be alone in calling for changes, and that "everyone" he had spoken to said there was room for improvement. Finland is sceptical about the draft constitution and plans for a dual presidency combined with a slimmed-down European Commission. It is anxious to have a strong Commission that will guarantee the rights of smaller member-states, a concern Mr Fischer acknowledged but said wasn't justified.
"As far as I am concerned, the idea that the smaller countries in the EU are constantly overridden by the bigger countries has no real basis in fact," said Mr Fischer. "Those who want to see a stronger Commission must also be in favour of a smaller one."
The draft constitution, hammered out after 16 months of negotiations in the 105-member European Convention, must be ratified by all member-state parliaments and by the European Parliament.
