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“We are not making a coalition of States,
but are uniting people.”
[ Jean Monnet, 30 April 1952 ]

From the Open Europe Press summary

Chirac and Merkel at odds over strategy for bringing back EU Constitution

In a speech to French Ambassadors yesterday Jacques Chirac called for parts of the EU Constitution to be cherry-picked and implemented separately. He suggested this could be done on areas such as “internal security and justice, external action and better involvement of national parliaments in the European decision-making process.” However, Angela Merkel has reiterated her opposition to this telling Der Spiegel, “To put single parts of this Constitution into force, and leave others aside, without knowing where you want to go, that does not work”. In an interview with La Croix German Home Affairs Minister (CDU) Peter Altmaier said “I am still convinced that the European Constitution is good. And this position on the contents of the treaty is shared by a large majority of states. Therefore heads of state must do everything possible to preserve this text.”

Chirac also ignored warnings from Jose Barroso and Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel not to back the idea of a “core Europe”. Chirac said that he wanted to bolster “the visibility and the weight of the euro zone… It is natural for euro-area member countries to deepen their political, economic, fiscal and social integration… States wishing to act together should be enabled to do so as a complement to common policies” across the whole EU. AP reports that EU Communications Commissioner Margot Wallstrom has said “the period of reflection on the EU Constitution should be extended beyond June 2006, since we have seen little debate up to now. Some have done a lot and others very little.” Dutch MP Lousewies van der Laan, who led the Dutch yes campaign, is quoted saying, “I want to be very clear on this subject. We will not ratify the text, and I sincerely ask Mrs Wallstrom - what part of no do you not understand?”

http://euobserver.com/?aid=20656&rk=1

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/10/news/eu.php

Arguing for the return of the EU Constitution has become the objective of the past week or so, ever since the presidency past from Britian to Austria in fact.

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel told a news conference in Vienna Monday “The constitution is not dead,” “The constitution is in the middle of a ratification process.” Well if that is the case then let us have our referendum.

Angela Merkel, the new German chancellor has said she believes the constitution could be signed off during Berlin’s presidency of the Union in the latter half of 2007. And Nicolas Sarkozy, has also said the treaty contains “important advances which improve the functioning of Europe, and would move towards a political Union.”

The story is;
There is increasing frustration in Brussels and other European capitals that an organization with 25 states simply cannot function smoothly with rules drawn up for just six countries almost half a century ago.

Ah! so we have to have a “Constitution” I repeat a Constitution just so that we can change the rules; because the EU is at present working under the Treaty of Rome “with rules drawn up for just six countries”

But of course it is not, this is just stupid spin, the EU treaty of Rome has been amended several times;

The Single European Act
the Maastricht Treaty,
the Treaty of Amsterdam.
The Treaty of Nice

The EU had already made major preparations for enlargement, prior to its
occurrence, without recourse to the draft Constitution:

The Treaty of Nice provided for the institutional changes necessary for enlargement.

So the treaty of Nice was supposed to sort out the rules to enable the EU to function with enlargement.

The constitution is not therefore needed for this reason, if we look at what it does we can see clearly what the Constitution is for, in fact there is no need to do even that, Nicolas Sarkozy has already told us the treaty contains “important advances which improve the functioning of Europe, and would move towards a political Union.” So the Constitution is a move towards political union, we should all remember that, lest anyone is stupid enough to tell us differently.