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Continental Divide

Merkel's Chance to Move on the EU Constitution

By Ralf Beste and Konstantin von Hammerstein

Now that France has been to the polls, the battle over a new European constitution enters its decisive phase. The EU's current president, Angela Merkel, faces resistance to her plan to salvage the "substance" of the treaty -- but resistance is one thing she understands.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel likes to keep everyone in suspense. She's good at playing the Great Enigma, a leader who doesn't commit, say what she wants, or -- above all -- make a decision before it has to be made.

In the past two weeks, Merkel has had four chances to play this role in the neverending tragedy known as "The European Constitution." Her engagements were for private audiences only: French President Jacques Chirac, his Finnish counterpart Tarja Halonen, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

All four unburdened their worries, doubts and wishes to the German chancellor. Merkel let them talk, quizzed them on details, but kept her views to herself.

The rejection of the European draft constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005 plunged the EU into the most serious crisis in its history. Now it's up to the woman who leads the Union's largest member country to save the situation. Success or failure on the constitution issue will be decided during the current six-month term of Berlin's EU presidency. Now that France has selected a new president, the crucial phase of Merkel's term has begun, and the coming eight weeks will show whether she can restore Europe’s capacity to function.

Merkel seems ready for the challenge. In mid-April she sent a single-page questionnaire to European heads of state that expressed the German view of how the debate should proceed. She wants her colleagues to arrive at a "very precise and clearly defined mandate" for a re-drafted constitution. "To be successful," reads the questionnaire, "every effort must be made to limit amendments to the absolutely essential."

Questions Without Answers

The paper includes 12 carefully worded questions. Would it be appropriate for the new draft to renounce symbols like the flag or the European anthem? Should passages on climate and energy policy be included? How should the Charter of Fundamental Rights be dealt with?

Berlin wasn't expecting concrete answers. In most cases it didn't get them. But the questionnaire did prompt debate in almost every member nation about what Germany wants. There was over-hasty jubilation in the Czech Republic that Merkel would try to drop the whole idea of an EU president and an EU foreign minister. In Madrid the thinking was that Berlin wanted a "pocket-sized" constitution.

But Merkel is listening patiently -- above all, to ideas put forward by the most "difficult" EU members. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said his opposition to a rejiggered version of the old constitution had nothing to do with his own opinion; he just worried that Dutch voters might reject it again.

Merkel called on Polish President Lech Kaczynski at his summer residence and some time later the hardened Euroskeptic admitted that a new constitution draft might be worthwhile.

She also invited Czech President Vaclav Klaus to a new government guesthouse at Meseberg Castle, near Berlin. Former German President Roman Herzog was also invited -- a retired politician -- so Klaus could complain to to his heart's content about the EU’s "democracy deficit."

So far the weeks of talks and exploratory contacts have resulted in one sobering realization: The divide in Europe between proponents and opponents of a constitution hasn't budged. The self-ordained friends of the Constitution amount to 18 States which have already ratified the treaty. The rest make up a somewhat disorderly but no less determined group of critics. The Britons, Czechs, Poles and Dutch reject anything in a constitutional treaty with the remotest hint of a "super state" -- including the word constitution itself. The posts of president and foreign minister in the EU, along with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, seem to them like prerogatives of a sovereign state. Tony Blair has warned that there will be no accord in June if the idea of a grandiose constitution isn't dropped in favor of a "simplified treaty."

The Dutch and Czechs agree that any whiff of a super state needs to be struck from the draft. But the Poles are more radical: They want to fiddle with the distribution of voting rights among member nations, the most controversial and hard-fought element of the old treaty. The present scheme is to assign greater weight in decision-making to larger countries (like Germany) than to small or medium states. This system, says Polish presidential advisor Marek Cichocki, is "unacceptable to a broad majority in Poland."

But Merkel seems to have ventured a cautious opinion on voting rights: "As regards this topic, the scope for compromise appears to have been almost exhausted," she says.

Others hold the same view -- regarding the whole treaty. The Dutch ambassador to Germany, Peter van Wulfften Palthe, argues that forging a compromise between the two camps is "a huge challenge … and we still don’t know how the German chancellor plans to do it."

But Berlin is open to compromise. The word "constitution" is already seen as a necessary sacrifice to European unity, as do flags, anthems and public holidays. The posts of foreign minister and president are no longer sacrosanct. The title "foreign minister" as also looks dispensable, with wrangling now focused on the powers and duties of the post.

Still, agreement is far from guaranteed, and Berlin is already wondering how to make its potential defeat smell good. “A big package is being wrapped," says one high-level diplomat in Berlin, "and deliberation will just be postponed. Then the whole thing can be sold as a success.”