AUSTRIA: Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel has said he plans to address the "grotesque centralisation tendency" of Europe when Austria takes over the EU presidency in January.
Mr Schüssel said he favoured a new attempt to ratify the constitutional treaty in two years' time after changing the culture of "over-regulation" from Brussels.
"My concern is not to convert all of Europe to federalism, " said Mr Schüssel in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper. "My concern is that Europe will function only when its variety is respected."
Mr Schüssel urged leaders not to spend the coming months and years "staring at the constitution but to change the politics of the EU". A more cautious approach to issues like centralisation and Turkey's possible EU accession, which Mr Schüssel opposes, might persuade French and Dutch voters to ratify the constitutional treaty a second time round, he said. The EU has to win back credibility, he said, citing new EU guidelines to protect from sunshine all outdoor workers, such as beer garden staff.
"I am all for worker protection but . . . how far a woman bares her cleavage has nothing to do with the commission," he said, calling for less regulation and greater commonsense personal responsibility. He added that the EU could learn lessons from the shortcomings of the Habsburg empire.
"The mistakes then were to favour two large language groups and to respect the others but treat them with lesser importance. Europe has to be built up on absolute equality of dignity of the individual peoples, languages and identities," Mr Schüssel said.