The European Union (EU) leaders will hold a two-day
brainstorming summit starting from Thursday, trying to save the
troubled EU Constitution and define further enlargement of the
25-nation bloc.
Austria's Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel, whose country hosts the
rotating EU presidency, wants his colleagues to draw a line under
the constitution trauma by 2009 and outline a positive agenda for
the union.
According to the draft conclusion, the EU leaders would promise
to push forward with further integration, which was put into
question after French and Dutch voters threw out the EU
constitution one year ago.
The constitution, agreed by European leaders on June 18, 2004,
brings together for the first time the many treaties and agreements
on which the EU is based. More important, it contains reforms vital
for the union to function as it expands.
The constitution cannot come into force unless it is ratified by
all member states. Until now, it has been ratified by 13 of the 25
member states, and two others have almost completed
ratification.
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However, the "no" votes in the two founding members plunged the EU
into its worst crisis. The EU leaders would not try to agree on how
to save the complicated blueprint for Europe's future but
effectively prolong the "period of reflection" announced last
year.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the bloc, has
suggested to leaders that they should do nothing now, but sign a
broad political declaration on ambitions and values in 2007, which
would serve as the basis for institutional reform at a later
date.
The strategy seems clear enough: step up EU cooperation in the
same direction indicated by the constitution under existing
treaties, while waiting until summer 2007 for new governments in
France and Netherlands.
The leaders of France and Germany, the traditional "integration
motors", agreed earlier this month that the constitution should be
tackled in the first half of next year, when Germany is running the
EU for six months.
"We have agreed that the constitutional treaty will be reviewed
during the German presidency, after a period of reflection," said
German Chancellor Angela Merkel after meeting French President
Jacques Chirac.
She added that "a decision should be reached" when France holds
the rotating presidency of the bloc in the second half of 2008.
Some argue that, without the constitution, the EU will continue
to function on the basis of the existing treaties. However, these
treaties provide for an EU of no more than 27 states.
So, either enlargement will have to stop after the accession of
Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 (or 2008), or the treaties will have
to be amended.
Not coincidently, the EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn
earlier this month announced that the union will freeze enlargement
until at least 2010.
"After Bulgaria and Romania...no other new accession is foreseen
during coming years, at least not before the end of the decade,"
Olli Rehn told the French parliament on June 6.
Turkey, Croatia and Macedonia are the only countries aside from
Romania and Bulgaria to hold official EU candidate status so far,
but Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and the-UN
administrated territory of Kosovo have also been promised an EU
future.
Earlier this year, EU governments already spread uncertainty
over its 2003 Balkan accession promises by saying EU membership
will depend on "absorption capacity" - EU jargon for problems
managing 27 or more veto powers and individual commissioners.
At this summit, Wolfgang Schussel, who leads a country with
serious conservations about Turkish membership, will also press
other EU leaders to agree tough new language that could slow the
pace of future enlargement.
Others like Britain believe turning this into a new criterion
would create an unfair new barrier to entry. They would prefer the
absorption capacity to be seen as simply a factor to be "take into
consideration".
The division on constitution and further enlargement shows the
EU was still undecided what it wants to be - a tight organization
in which member states share significant sovereignty or a looser
grouping of nations states, said EU diplomats.
It is widely believed that no groundbreaking would be made at
the summit. But the European Commission President Jose Manuel
Barroso has warned that the union should not be in a hurry to close
it borders.
"There are concerns about absorption capacity, but look what it
has done for the EU," Barroso told the European Parliament one day
ahead of the summit.
"I want an open Europe, not a miniature one. We need an enlarged
EU that can face globalization," he added.
(Xinhua News Agency June 15, 2006)
