When EU leaders took delivery of Europe's first draft constitution at a summit in Thessaloniki, Greece, last June, it was with almost universal acclamation.
There was wide agreement that the text could save the EU from paralysis once it expands from 15 to 25 members next year, giving it more stable leadership and greater clout in the world.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
It was too good to last.
The product of a unique 16-month public debate, the draft approved overwhelmingly by a convention of lawmakers and national representatives chaired by former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing has become a battleground.
Former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato, vice-president of the forum, recalled mixed feelings as he watched government representatives stand together for Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the official EU anthem, on the day the text was adopted.
"I said to myself, they are doing this because there is a second round, not because they are convinced," he said.
Less than four months later, the same leaders opened that second round on Saturday by drawing red lines, digging trenches and trading veiled threats to block agreement or cut off funds if they don't get their way.
The tone was polite, but unyielding. There was none of the thunder and personal venom that marked recent EU disputes over the Iraq war or agricultural subsidies.
In a bland joint statement, the leaders stressed that the constitution "represents a vital step in the process aimed at making Europe more cohesive, more transparent and democratic, more efficient and closer to its citizens."
But the sharp differences they set out over voting rights, the size and composition of the executive European Commission, defense cooperation and the role of religion set the stage for a struggle over power in an enlarged EU in the coming weeks.
Growing worry
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's hopes of wrapping up a deal by Christmas seem far from certain to be realized.
"I left Thessaloniki confident that we would achieve by the end of the year an agreement on a constitution that would be very close to what the convention proposed," Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told reporters.
Now, he said he felt a growing worry that positions were drifting further apart.
While the six founding members of the EU -- Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg -- plus Britain and Denmark, want as little change as possible to the draft, the 10 mainly central European countries due to join the 15-nation bloc next year seek to alter the institutional balance.
A majority of small states are afraid of being steamrollered by the five biggest countries and are determined to defend the disproportionate voting rights they won at the 2000 Nice summit and to each keep their national member of the EU executive.
Their suspicion that the "big boys" bend the rules to suit themselves has been hardened by the recent spectacle of France and Germany flouting the budget deficit limits they imposed on the entire EU in the 1990s to underpin the euro single currency.
Smaller states, which made painful sacrifices to obey those rules, are furious at the prospect of Paris and Berlin escaping punishment in the name of spurious "special circumstances." Spain and Poland have dug the deepest trenches, fighting to preserve the weighted voting system adopted at Nice which gives them almost as much power as Germany, although they have only half its population.
Prime Ministers Jose Maria Aznar and Leszek Miller, renowned as two of Europe's toughest negotiators, disavowed any interest in bargaining away their acquired rights for other benefits. That prompted French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to draw an explicit link between a constitutional deal and the EU's future financing.
The threat was clear: if Poland and Spain, key beneficiaries of EU aid to poorer regions, want to avoid alienating Europe's main paymaster, Germany, they will have to yield.
But Madrid and Warsaw have EU law on their side. Unless there is a unanimous agreement to change the voting system, the Nice rules will continue to apply.
EU experts fear that would create exactly the paralysis which the convention was established to overcome following the nightmare of the marathon wrangling in Nice.
European Parliament President Pat Cox warned the leaders on Saturday that it would be harder to get a "miserable lowest common denominator" treaty ratified if it unravelled the main achievements of Giscard's constitution.
"A retreat to the Treaty of Nice would condemn the enlarged EU to gridlock," warned Claus Giering and Janis Emmanouilidis in a research paper for the Bertelsmann Foundation think-tank.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
RSS