EUROPEAN CONVENTION: CONFUSION INCREASES OVER DRAFT CONSTITUTION.

Manoeuvring by Spain.

With negotiations entering the final stages, there is increasing evidence of bartering. However, Valery Giscard d'Estaing is more widespread opposition than he anticipated. The tone was set by comments mid-week from EPP group leader Elmar Brok, accusing the Convention President of "failing in his role of honest broker" and of proposing an "extraordinarily disappointing" draft which "fails to reflect majority opinion" within the Convention. Romano Prodi added to the criticism, regretting that the project "lacks vision and ambition". The tone hardened further on May 30 in response to Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who alluded ironically to the manifest inability of his detractors to "do the job in his place over the past ten years". Speaking in Saint Petersburg where he was attending the EU-Russia Summit, the Commission President responded that the project appears "less ambitious than he had hoped and indeed less ambitious than President Valery Giscard d'Estaing had intimated at the outset", adding that the Convention President "is anxious to establish his credentials as one of the founding fathers of the modern European Constitution and not one whose genius was stifled by those incapable of acknowledging that the status quo is tantamount to paralysis".

Heads of State and Government from nine countries - Austria, Denmark, Cyprus, Spain, Ireland, Lithuania, Poland, the United Kingdom and Sweden - have nevertheless backed the "Nice status quo" (weighting of votes within the Council, division of seats within the European Parliament and the composition of the European Commission) which, though not perfect, has the merit of representing "the point of equilibrium between the various competing interests". Indeed Alfonso Dastis (Spain), Dick Roche (Ireland), Henning Christophersen (Denmark), Danuta Hubner (Poland), Hannes Farnleitner (Austria), Rytis Martikonis (Lithuania), Michalis Attalides (Cyprus), Lena Hjelm-Wallen (Sweden) and Peter Hain (United Kingdom) insist this was agreed at the Athens Summit on April 16. Madrid appears to have played an active role in this initiative. Its representative on the Convention categorically rejects the notion of a new weighting of votes within the Council, a move that would inevitably diminish the advantages that Spain received in Nice. Combining demands with those of other countries more concerned with the maintenance of their right to a Commissioner and the status quo regarding the number of...