EUROPE’S smaller states were closing ranks yesterday against a plan by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, chief architect of the new EU constitution, which would create a Union president and hand power back to the bigger nations.

Officials from Britain and the big continental states voiced quiet satisfaction, but the EU Commission, Parliament and a majority of the 25 members of the enlarged Union were surprised and angered by the uncompromising nature of M Giscard’s scheme.

By creating a full-time chairman and permanent bureau to run the Council of Member States, the plan would fulfil the wishes of Britain, France and Spain, and to a lesser extent Germany and Italy, for a presidency that would help to keep the EU reins in the hands of the national Governments. The battlelines are drawn for a feud over the sensitive “who does what” question that risks ending, late in the year, with the haggling that characterises EU business.

Belgium said that the proposal by the former French President, which would trim the authority of the Commission, had “hit us out of the blue”. It flew in the face of the proposals from the three Benelux states, it said. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg support the majority, which want to retain the six-month rotating EU presidencies that the big states deem inefficient.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg and a leading voice among the EU’s smaller states, accused M Giscard of ignoring 16 of the 25 EU leaders. “I would like to think that this is just a provocation aimed at stirring debate,” he said, adding that the plan stood no chance of being adopted.

M Giscard’s team emphasised that his scheme for a full-time Council chief, to be drawn from present or past government leaders, did not mean the creation of a parallel executive or a big-nation directoire.

The chief would play a strategic role in the manner of a company chairman rather than a chief executive. There would also be a vice-president, drawn from one of the smaller states. The plan also answered a desire by the majority of states for an EU “foreign minister”, by creating such a post. The holder would report to the Council.

Less pleasing to Britain and other sovereignty-minded states was M Giscard’s plan for decisions to be taken through a simplified majority system.

The smaller states, which see the Commission as the guarantor of their rights, are especially upset by M Giscard’s call to trim to 13 the number of commissioners, with 12 additional “councillors” from states without seats. The smaller states want to continue with one commissioner per state. He also rejected a plan, reluctantly endorsed by Britain recently, for the Commission president to be elected by the European Parliament. Under his scheme, the choice would remain in the hands of EU leaders.

Britain reacted with relief to the proposal to stay with the present method. Tony Blair has been under pressure from Europe to accept an elected Commission president in return for agreement over the plan originally put forward by France for a president of the EU.

The Parliament reacted with fury to the Giscard plan. Elmar Brok, a senior German Christian Democrat, said: “This is purely about reducing the powers of smaller EU countries, the Commission and the European Parliament.”

The Commission said: “Increasing the number of presidents and vice-presidents, setting up a bureau, can only bring confusion. Duplication of bureaucracies goes against common sense . . .”

The spokesman for Romano Prodi, President of the Commission, said that he had “never seen such an inter- governmental scheme”.

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