A two-day summit is set to open in Brussels on Thursday at which Germany, as current European Union president, intends to hold debates and try to get the Constitution out of its deadlock. There are possibilities that a new draft will be completed by 2009, which would be a satisfactory compromise for all parties.
Hopes that the summit will succeed are slim. The conflict is not so much over whether the scope of the new draft should be wider or narrower. Underlying the debates on the new instrument of European unity is a clash between the older and the more recent EU member countries. The former believe in the benefits of an independent EU foreign policy, while the latter seek to dominate the EU to further their own interests and those of the United States.
Because a mere 16 out of the total 27 EU members have ratified it in full, the draft constitution is frozen. More countries that have pledged to hold referendums - Britain, for one - are certain to turn the constitution down and send the EU into an even worse crisis than what it went through in 2005.
All these concerns have given rise to the idea of a limited version replacing a full-fledged constitution. New EU members, led by Poland, are enthusiastic about that. The new document is not supposed to be termed a "constitution" and will omit clauses on a European flag, anthem and motto.
What survives of the initial draft are the concepts of a permanent president to replace the six-month rotating one, and an EU foreign minister. The European Commission is supposed to cut back its membership, so that not every country will have a commissioner.
The mini-unity-pact is unlikely to build up the European Union's international influence. It will not make united Europe a legal entity able to join international organizations as one.
New EU members - former Soviet satellites - are anxious to push the pact through. A constitution crafted according to Jacques Chirac's dream is the last thing they want.
As the former French president sees it, united Europe needs a fundamental law to grow stronger and so withstand American influence. The best Old World brains, who invented the Constitution in the first place, aim to bring forces into a steady global balance and put an end to the present excessive role of a hyperpower.
Poland and its allies, on the contrary, are offering themselves to the United States as a bridgehead across the Atlantic. EU founders are baffled that Romania and Bulgaria never cared to ask the advice of Brussels on hosting U.S. military bases, while American ABM components are set to be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic - a doubtful benefit, which has more cons than pros for European security.
The new constitutional draft is expected to omit the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which EU members signed in 2000, largely at the request of the new members. The Brussels summit unluckily coincides with more revelations of secret CIA jails found by independent investigators in Poland and Romania. Naturally, countries violating basic human rights find it awkward to publicly support those rights.
Warsaw blocked a new long-term Russia-EU partnership agreement a few weeks ago owing to Moscow's meat import embargo. Tellingly, Germany turned down a huge batch of Polish meat very soon afterward. Now, Poland is demanding a disproportionate number of seats on the Council of Europe, the European Commission and other institutions. Its bloated ambitions are the worst danger for the unity agreement that the Brussels summit has been called to discuss.
Proportionate representation pegs the number of a country's seats to its population - an option Poland will not agree to. Its interests are moving ever closer to America's, so it wants greater influence to be able to make more effective use of the EU.
The Brussels meeting would be far more fruitful if it discussed not a substitute constitution but new EU members' ideas for its future. Do they want an independent and self-reliant geopolitical entity, open to international contacts, or a receptacle for another country's jails, radars and missiles?
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
