EUROPEAN CONVENTION: VARYING RESPONSES BY MEMBER STATES SUGGEST COMPLICATED IGC.

France's Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin congratulated Valery Giscard d'Estaing on the draft European Constitution, indicating that "France will approve the Convention's conclusions. This is an historic step". Drawing a similar line, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder indicated that Berlin and Paris are "determined without restriction to support" the compromise of a Constitution for an enlarged Europe. Germany will nevertheless continue to press for more decisions on foreign policy to be taken by qualified majority, whilst Paris will seek to maintain the "cultural exception" in commercial policy.

Finland meanwhile feels that the results of the Convention do not reflect aspirations shared by all the EU's Member States. Prime Minister Anneli Jaeaetteenmaeki told the national parliament in Helsinki that the Member States would need to continue negotiating in the context of the IGC. Indeed the forthcoming IGC promises to be turbulent with Poland's Prime Minister Leszek Miller in particular declaring that his Government "does not agree" to changes to the Nice Treaty notably regarding qualified majority...