France warns against watering down EU constitution

France warned Britain and others yesterday not to try to water down a draft European Union constitution, saying it should form the core of a new founding treaty for the bloc.

Britain has said it wants to haggle over articles of the draft, drawn up by the Convention on the Future of Europe under former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing and due to be presented at an EU summit starting today.

But a spokeswoman for French President Jacques Chirac said that was the aim neither of the summit in Thessaloniki, Greece, nor of an Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) on the draft due to start in October.

"We think the Convention has produced a work of great quality which is a qualitative leap," spokeswoman Catherine Colonna told a pre-summit briefing.

"We hope this work can receive the full support of the European Council in Thessaloniki and that it constitutes the basis of the work of the next IGC. There is no question of starting from scratch," she said. She noted Chirac was the first current EU leader to propose an EU constitution in a speech to the German parliament in 2000. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday the draft was a "good starting point" for negotiation and signalled that British negotiators would seek amendments to articles calling for closer coordination of tax and economic policy.

Britain opposes the existing text of Article 14, which calls for the coordination of economic and employment policies.

It also opposes a paragraph in Article 24 that suggests the EU could change articles of the constitution in the future by qualified majority voting, rather than unanimity.

Key reforms in the draft include naming a long-term president of the European Council for up to five years, replacing the current rotating presidency.

The draft proposes an EU foreign minister and a slimmed-down executive European Commission of 15 full members, based on the principle of strict rotation to ensure equality of states.

EU foreign ministers agreed on Monday that the draft was "a good basis" for negotiating a new founding treaty for the bloc.

But a majority of the 28 states taking part in negotiations said they would fight to preserve complex voting rules that give small states power disproportionate to their population.