Enlarged EU faces power struggle over constitution

The struggle for power in an enlarged European Union begins in earnest tomorrow when leaders of 25 present and future member states open negotiations in Rome on Europe's first constitution.

After ceremonial speeches in Mussolini's imposing Palazzo dei Congressi in the Fascist-era suburb of Eur, the EU's large and small states will pitch into a tug-of-war over voting rights and seats at Europe's top table.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is hoping to crown Italy's six-month EU presidency by concluding talks by the end of the year, with as little change as possible to a draft drawn up by a Convention of EU lawmakers and national delegates in June.

His foreign minister, Franco Frattini, wants to impose a tight deadline, insisting no country may submit an amendment to the constitution unless it has a consensus for an alternative.

But a majority of "like minded" small- and medium-sized states have other ideas. They argue that the big countries - Germany, France, Italy and Britain - hijacked the Convention to boost their power, abetted by the forum's chairman, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and are determined to reverse the outcome.

Disputed areas include the size and composition of the executive European Commission, the future of the EU's rotating presidency, the scope of EU defence integration and whether to include references to God or Christianity in the text.

But the central fight at the so-called Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) will be over voting power.

"This question will end up at the European Council (summit), on the last day, in the last night, in the last hour," a senior German official said.

Spain and Poland, two dogged negotiators, are leading the battle to overturn Mr Giscard d'Estaing's key reform, which would see most EU decisions taken by a simple majority of member states representing 60 per cent of the bloc's 450 million population.

They are determined to keep the disproportionate clout they won in a complex weighted voting system under the Nice treaty, negotiated behind closed doors in a bitter marathon in 2000.

That gave the two countries, with about 40 million citizens, 27 votes each, compared to 29 seats for Germany (population: 82 million), France, Britain and Italy (about 60 million each).

"For Poland, the Nice agreement is not a matter for discussion," Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said on Tuesday, standing with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

Germany, the EU's chief paymaster, which stands to gain most from the reform, has hinted its willingness to go on funding EU regional aid, of which Madrid and Warsaw are key beneficiaries, after 2006 may hinge on getting its way on the constitution.

The 10 acceding countries, mostly small former communist central and east European states, are bent on keeping the right of each country to name a full voting member of the Commission.

Diplomats think Spain and Poland may eventually be assuaged by raising the population threshold to 66 per cent to give them the same blocking power as France, Britain and Italy, and/or by giving them more European Parliament seats.

Leaders of Baltic and four central European states, at separate summits on Wednesday, vowed to defend institutional arrangements their voters endorsed in referendums this year.

In the name of efficiency, Mr Giscard d'Estaing had proposed trimming the EU executive to 15 full members, from 20 at present and 25 next year, with membership rotating equally among member states.

This is the point the IGC seems most likely to change, given a widespread sense that public acceptance of Commission rulings hinges on the presence of a member from each state at the table.

Most diplomats expect Mr Giscard d'Estaing's draft to be adopted with few major changes after a noisy fight - if not in time for a mid-December summit, then at the latest in February.

"However much argument goes on in the IGC, they will fetch up with something very, very like the document that emerged from the Convention, which was a political triumph," EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten told Reuters.

But some governments may be inclined to spin the talks out into next year, not least to deprive Mr Berlusconi of a political victory after he caused widespread offence in July by comparing a German EU lawmaker with a Nazi camp guard, diplomats say.