Leaders from 25 nations met yesterday to try to thrash out a constitution that will decide the balance of power in the EU as it seeks to increase its influence in world affairs and opens up to new members from the former Communist east.
The leaders had to agree on a draft constitutional treaty to guide an expanded EU that's grown bigger and richer than the US with over 450 million people and generating a quarter of the world's economic output.
The charter aims to strengthen cooperation on defense, foreign policy, immigration and other issues to give the European bloc a political voice to match its formidable economic clout.
PHOTO: AP
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, the meeting's chairman, had no doubts about the significance of the summit, calling it "the most important in the history of Europe."
But the leaders go into the meeting divided, despite warnings that failure to agree a workable text would leave the EU rudderless as it confronts the challenge of bringing welcoming in the 10 eastern and southern neighbors who join on May 1.
Despite the high stakes, leaders were split over a raft of issues from voting rights for Poland and Spain, to British taxes, Irish neutrality and the demand by some governments for a reference to God in the constitutional treaty.
Even the normally confident Berlusconi warned it would be "miraculous" if the leaders achieved an agreement during the weekend talks. After talks with the German government on Thursday, Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski said "realistically speaking, today it is very difficult to see ... a compromise."
Poland and Germany are on opposite sides of the most intractable dispute.
Joined by Spain, the Poles are resisting changes to the voting rules in EU meetings which they say will give inordinate power to the EU's big four nations -- Germany, France, Italy and Britain.
Both sides say they have little room to compromise, promising a bruising round of talks expected to run beyond the scheduled deadline today. "It's going to be tough," acknowledged British Prime Minister Tony Blair as he huddled with Berlusconi on the eve of the talks.
Blair is also under pressure to resist what many in traditionally euro-skeptic Britain see an attempt to replace national independence with a European superstate.
Britain's best-selling daily newspaper yesterday launched a ferocious attack on the proposed constitution.
"No surrender" screamed the front-page headline of the Sun tabloid, which accused Blair of preparing to "sell out" to the EU by being ready to sign the new treaty.
The fiercely euroskeptic paper renewed its demand that Blair allows British voters a referendum on the constitution, a move he has consistently ruled out.
Stressing that most Britons want a referendum, the paper accused the prime minister of considering the will of the people as irrelevant.
"That is the action not of a democrat but of a dictator," said the Sun, which delivered a major boost to Blair's Labour party when it came out in favor of him during the 1997 British general election.
Britain has said it will refuse at the Brussels summit to surrender its veto rights on "red line" issues such as foreign and defense policy, labor policy and taxation.
But the Sun claimed that signing up to the first-ever EU constitution would be "the first step to handing sweeping political power to the EU."
The Sun also produced a pamphlet titled "Britain Shackled," which it said translated Euro "waffle" in the proposed constitution into plain English, making clear what it said were the dangers to Britain's sovereignty.
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