INSTITUTIONAL REFORM: SPLITS EMERGE OVER FATE OF EU CONSTITUTION.

Chirac calls for "pioneer group" of euzo-zone members.

French President Jacques Chirac said in his New Year address to the French diplomatic corps repeated his call for "pioneer groups" of EU countries to go beyond the current policies agreed by the 25 member states. Euro-zone members, the twelve countries that have adopted the euro, had a "natural vocation" to deepen their integration in the fields of politics, economics, tax and social policies, the President said. France would "examine" all available means to strengthen the "visibility" and "weight" of the euro-zone, he said.

The French President highlighted three areas where the EU could make deepen its integration efforts on the basis of the current Treaties. These were: justice and internal security; the EU's external policies and defence; and closer involvement of national parliaments in the European decision-making process.

Welcome from Belgian PM.

Mr Chirac's comments were welcomed by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. "President Chirac has given a new impulse for the European Union by arguing for a group of euro-zone countries to establish much closer cooperation", Mr Verhofstadt's office said in a statement. The Belgian Prime Minister made similar proposals in a book titled "The United States of Europe", published in December 2005.

The French President also said that the Union needed "more democratic, more effective and more transparent institutions" in particular because with "institutional status quo" the planned enlargement to take in Bulgaria and Romania (expected in 2007) would condemn the EU to "inertia and paralysis".

He added that France wanted the June summit to produce some "concrete progress" for Europe.

German minister warns against "cherry-picking".

However, President Chirac's call for pioneer groups to push with faster integration was rebuffed by the new German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel, despite the fact that Mr Chirac is hoping for a close working relationship like he had with her predecessor, Gerhard Schroder.

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeyer was quoted in the Handelsblatt newspaper on January 10 saying that "separating out individual parts" of the Constitution, as Mr Chirac seemed to be suggesting for national parliaments, was "not easy" because the Constitution had been negotiated with great difficulty as a single package. Berlin believes that a "cherry-picking" approach would finish off chances of getting the Constitution...