THE British Government yesterday dismissed as “unacceptable” a redrafted European constitution unveiled by Italy, holder of the European Union presidency, before the negotiations’ critical two-week endgame.

Greatest concern centred on a surprise amendment making it virtually impossible for member-states to conduct independent foreign policy initiatives, such as the Iraq war. One British government source called that “loony”.

Officals said that in some respects the document was worse than the original document produced by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s Brussels convention earlier this year.

It offers a few concessions to Britain in areas such as defence and criminal law, but virtually none on any of the Government’s other “red line” issues such as tax, social security or the national rebate.

“There is a long way to go before this is acceptable to us,” a British government spokesman said. “We wouldn’t sign up to it as it stands, but we wouldn’t expect to be in that position at this stage. We are beginning two weeks of hard negotiation.”

The EU’s foreign ministers will hold a hastily arranged meeting in Naples tomorrow to try to break the impasse. The heads of Government are supposed to sign off on the new constitution at a summmit in mid-December. “I still believe a deal is possible,” Tony Blair’s spokesman said last night.

But Michael Ancram, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said that the Italian draft “demonstrates the Government’s consistent failure in Europe. They’ve given the nod to the vast bulk of this constitution, but even their so-called ‘red lines’ . . . are now in danger.”

He added: “This EU foreign minister’s power would put an end to this country’s independent foreign policy.”

The Italian redraft suggests that individual member states would have no right to veto the proposals of a new EU foreign minister and that those proposals could be approved by qualified majority voting (QMV).

The government spokesman said: “It is clear that foreign policy has to be the preserve of the nation state. There is no question of accepting QMV in the European Union’s foreign policy.”

However, Italy, Germany and many smaller states are in favour of losing the national veto on foreign policy, while France said yesterday that it would accept it if there were a broad consensus in favour.

Andrew Duff, the Liberal Democrats’ European constitutional spokesman, said that he supported the proposal: “If you’re going to have a Foreign Minister, you have to facilitate his decision-making — if you don’t have QMV, you will not have much of a foreign policy.”

The draft’s proposal on future amendments to the constitution also represents a step backwards for Britain. In some instances, it would introduce qualified majority voting in place of the veto to make it easier to change the constitution.

The new draft suggests that countries should lose the veto on tax measures aimed at fighting tax fraud, and for legislation on social security for migrant workers. Britain would also lose its veto on how EU funds are distributed between members, meaning that other countries could vote away Britain’s rebate, which is worth between £2 billion and £4 billion a year.

Under the Government’s “red lines”, it is opposed to any loss of veto at all on tax, social security, defence, foreign policy or the rebate.

The draft would remove the national veto on criminal law, where the constitution suggests harmonising procedures such as the right to silence and legal aid.

It does make one small concession by including an “emergency brake” to reduce the impact of changes. However, the UK Government insists that is insuff-icient because Britain’s unique “common law” criminal system is so different from the rest of Europe.

The biggest concession to Britain is on defence, where the draft constitution commits countries to “mutual defence” if attacked and allows a group of countries to work together to develop their military capabilities.

Britain is worried that the treaty could undermine Nato, but the new draft makes clear that the EU is not trying to replace the alliance that has kept the peace in Europe for more than half a century. It also stipulates that any group of countries seeking to co-ordinate their military capabilities have to admit other EU countries if they want to join.

The new draft is silent on the issue of whether to include a reference to “Christian values”, much favoured by Roman Catholic countries such as Poland and Ireland.

It is also silent on the even more contentious issue of the voting weights of different member states, with Poland and Spain arguing that they should be allowed to keep the heavier voting weights that they gained under the Nice treaty agreed in 2000.

Italy has left those two issues for the EU summit in Brussels on December 12, the deadline for agreeing the new constitution.

The problem for Britain in the next few weeks is that many EU countries support the draft constitution as it stands and want to see as few changes as possible. That makes it an uphill struggle for the UK to negotiate a large number of concessions on a wide range of issues.

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