New European Union Council president Austria suffered a blow to its hopes of reviving the EU Constitution on Wednesday when Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot declared it ”dead”.
After a talk with his visiting Austrian counterpart, Ursula Plassnik, in The Hague, Bot said: ”We discussed the constitution, which for The Netherlands is dead.”
”As far as we’re concerned, there’s no debate that this Constitution will again be submitted for ratification,” he added.
In June last year, the Dutch voters rejected the Constitution by the resounding majority of more than 60% in a referendum.
Bot also excluded ”quick solutions” or ”picking out the raisins” as means of saving the Constitution. Salvaging certain elements of the document is no satisfactory solution. His side has stated that clearly.
”We believe we should for the time being concentrate on practical measures on the foundation of the Treaty of Nice,” said Bot.
His statement directly contradicted Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, who said after talks with the EU Commission in Vienna on Monday that the Constitution is ”not dead” and should be revived.
Commission president Jose Manual Barroso took a cautious line at the time, saying the citizens are not so much interested in institutional questions as in jobs and growth. These must therefore be top priority.
Austria received another dampener when Finnish President Tarja Halonen, in a Spanish newspaper interview, said she is ”surprised” by Schuessel’s wish to revive the debate.
”For us, the declared pause after the referendums in France and The Netherlands is still valid,” she said in the paper El Pais on Tuesday. Finland will take over the EU presidency from Austria on July 1.
Before visiting The Netherlands on Wednesday, Plassnik was in France on Tuesday, the other country that rejected the Constitution in a referendum last year.
Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy gave Austria an assurance of French support for all initiatives that would give the EU new momentum. He denied that the ”no” of the French people to the Constitution had meant they ”did not want Europe”. — Sapa-dpa