Full text: Merkel's blueprint for Europe

Britain is facing a bruising battle over the future of Europe next week after it emerged that most nations want to keep alive the key objectives of the failed constitution.

The scale of the task facing Tony Blair at his last summit became clear last night after Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, in a letter to fellow leaders — obtained by The Times — revealed that most countries want to keep the “substance” of the main changes agreed in the last attempt to push through a constitution.

Poland, meanwhile, threatened to derail the whole summit. President Kaczynski told The Times that he would reject the treaty unless Poland received more votes in Brussels.

A bluffer's guide to the EU treaty

Our correspondent hacks through the verbiage to explain what happened at the EU summit and what it means

• Patchwork deal proves Europe cannot heal its deepest wounds

BACKGROUND

• Unconstitutional

• Fresh start or revived constitution?

• Merkel’s dream; Britain’s nightmare

• Brown’s first test: how to avoid an EU constitution

• Europe divided over summit plans

Related Links

• Full text: Merkel's blueprint for Europe

• Poland ‘is ready to wreck everything if our voting demands are not met’

• Poles Apart

At the same time the man who wrote the original draft, rejected in 2005 by France and the Netherlands, claimed that it was being brought in by the back door and that Europe should be bold enough to admit it.

Mrs Merkel, in a gesture to Britain, France and the Netherlands, said in the report that they could have a smaller “amending treaty” which would not be called a constitution. But she added that the rest regarded this as a “major concession” and insisted “on the need to preserve the substance of the innovations agreed” in the past.

She also appeared to accept that the controversial charter of fundamental rights, which Britain is trying to keep out of the treaty, would be “legally binding” even if it was left out, by having a “crossreference” in the body of the treaty.

That caused alarm last night among allies of Gordon Brown who, as the incoming Prime Minister, is desperate to avoid any treaty that would require a referendum. David Cameron, the Tory leader, is poised to call for one if there is any ceding of powers to Brussels. A Brown ally said: “There can be no ambiguity in this which might unravel over time. The charter of fundamental rights must never have any bearing on the British legal system.”

Mrs Merkel’s plans for the summit next week show that extra workers’ rights, a new legal status for the EU, as well as supreme authority for the European Court of Justice, are among measures opposed by Britain.

The German Chancellor’s plan was revealed as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French President and author of the constitution, wrote in Le Monde that by making “cosmetic” changes to the constitution “public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly”. That would reinforce the idea among European citizens that Europe is a machinery “organised behind their backs by jurists and diplomats”.

He argued in Le Monde that “if governments agree on a simplified treaty preserving the essential institutional advances, they should not be afraid to say so and write so”. Efforts were underway to try to “conserve part of the innovations of the Constitutional Treaty and to camouflage them by breaking them up into several texts”.

He said: “The most innovative elements will be the object of simple amendments to the Maastricht and Nice treaties. The technical improvements would be regrouped into a bland and painless treaty. The sum of these texts will be presented to parliaments, which will vote on them separately. Thus public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them ‘directly’.”

The original EU constitution was shelved after being rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005.

But Mrs Merkel has made it a top priority of her country’s six-month EU presidency to revive a treaty to reorganise and update the workings of the 27-member group.

In a further sign of what Britain is up against, she said that the 18 countries that had ratified the failed constitution were pushing hard “to preserve the substance of the innovations” in the 2004 document.

These include a new foreign minister for the EU, an extension of qualified majority voting to the sensitive areas of criminal justice and the charter of fundamental rights. This is a document which sets out common rights for all EU workers, which the Government believes will lead to a series of court battles with unions to redefine British labour law.

Mrs Merkel admitted yesterday to the German parliament that she wanted to keep most of the substance of the constitution, but she added that agreement was still a long way off.

“A solution is still not in view,” she said in a speech to the Bundestag. “We want to keep the substance of the treaty without overburdening people.”

Times Recommends

• Would you live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall?
• Wish you were here, says Iraq tourist board
• Russian policeman’s corruption plea to Putin