EU Constitution dead but no one wants to bury it

The European Union's Constitution is dead but no one wants to be first to bury it.

After Dutch voters screamed Nee by an even more crushing margin than France's resounding no, EU leaders are groping for a way out, looking to salvage what can be saved while trying to avoid blame for the disaster, diplomats say.

"No one wants to be the first to stab Caesar," one EU diplomat said. "Each leader is looking at the other and saying 'after you, Cassius'."

In public, the heads of the three main EU institutions insist the show must go on and each of the 25 members should be allowed to deliver its verdict on a treaty designed to give an enlarged bloc stable leadership and smoother decision-making.

But with two founder members giving an unequivocal thumbs-down to a charter that requires unanimity to come into force, that can only be a holding position, designed to last until a June 16-17 EU summit and calm financial markets.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who holds the EU presidency, said on Wednesday voters had "rejected Europe in the way it is proposed by the constitutional treaty".

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi summed up the quandary facing Europe's battered leaders when asked what the future was for the Constitution.

"That's the question everybody is asking themselves. We'll give an answer at the council meeting in mid-June. There's nobody right now who has a definitive answer, one that is valid for everybody," he told reporters in Rome.

Leaders in countries such as Britain and the Czech Republic, with deeply Eurosceptical publics, cannot be expected to risk political suicide by holding referendums on a still-born treaty.

So behind the scenes, governments are frantically looking for ways to keep EU integration going despite this huge public slap in the face to Europe's ruling establishment.

Put simply, the options being discussed in Brussels and national capitals look a bit like the buttons on a video player:

Play - continue the ratification process in the hope that as many countries as possible approve the Constitution and create a favourable balance of power for a late 2006 review.

Stop - admit the treaty is never going to enter into force and spare other member states the humiliation of losing referendums on a dead text; soldier on under the Treaty of Nice.

Pause - admit the French and Dutch votes mean ratification will have to be extended since France and the Netherlands won't have reversed their votes by end 2006; agree a cooling-off period during which member states would be free to go ahead with or suspend ratification according to national circumstances.

Fast Forward - accelerate the ratification process, possibly with a single day for a super-referendum in several countries; then hold an early summit to see how to move forward once it is clear how many countries back the treaty and how many don't.

Rewind - recognise that the Constitution in its current form will never fly; strip out a few key provisions needed to make the EU work more smoothly, such as the streamlined voting system and EU foreign minister, put them in a short protocol amending the Nice Treaty that could be ratified by national parliaments. Each of those options has variations, including traditional EU expedients such as asking a panel of "wise persons" or a "Mr Constitution" to suggest a way forward.

But diplomats say each raises problems. The European Commission publicly favours the first option - keeping ratification going.

But senior commissioners are privately much more reticent, worrying that another 18 months of losing referendum battles could do more damage to the EU's public standing and inhibit the Commission from driving forward economic liberalisation.

Mr Juncker, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, may propose the fast forward option of trying to reverse the negative dynamic by going for an accelerated ratification, a source close to him said.