European Union (EU) leaders meeting here on Friday adopted a draft European Constitution as the basis for a final blueprint to be hammered out later this year, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis said.
”We have lived a very important day for the European Union, an important day in European unification,” Simitis told reporters.
”For the first time in the history of Europe we have a project for a Constitution.”
Brandishing a first blue leather-bound copy of the draft, Simitis said it had been adopted as the working document for an inter- governmental conference that is due to debate the Constitution proposals in October.
Simitis said that EU member states had warmly welcomed the work of former French president Valerie Giscard D’Estaing, who led the 105-member convention that drew up the document after 16 months of sometimes heated debate.
”Despite the uncertainties, doubts and questions… the result is here in front of us all today. It is true that the result is built on compromise, but it is an excellent compromise,” he said.
The blueprint, which was only finalised last week, aims to prevent decision making gridlock when the 15 member bloc takes in another 10 mostly ex-communist states, expanding its population to 450-million.
But the members were divided on some issues, and particularly on whether to extend ”qualified majority voting” to contentious areas like tax, defence and foreign policy, in which some states are determined to retain their vetoes.
Giscard D’Estaing, who had earlier fielded questions on the document from EU leaders at a round table, said the text was not a compromise but rather a ”synthesis” uniting the demands that had been made of his convention.
The treaty notably proposes a full-time EU president to replace the current unwieldy six month rotating leadership, a new foreign minister, a slimmed-down commission, and reduction of the right of veto. – Sapa-AFP