EU: The head of a forum mapping out the EU's future unveiled the first articles of a draft constitution yesterday, but ran into immediate charges from Eurosceptics of seeking a centralised superstate.
Mr Valery Giscard D'Estaing, a former French president, said the draft set out in easily understandable language the values, aims and powers of the EU, which will expand from 15 members to nearly 30 in the coming years.
"Our aim is to allow citizens to understand immediately the essential characteristics of the union, why it was set up, what it does and what it plans to achieve," he told a plenary session of the forum, the Convention on the Future of Europe.
The first of the 16 articles published refers to a union of states and of peoples who have come together to co-ordinate policies and pool some "common competences in a federal way".
The word "federal" is anathema to Eurosceptics, especially in Britain, who see it as heralding the end of the nation state. Yet it describes the present state of affairs where Community law takes precedence in a number of policy areas.
The text makes it clear that the union can only act in areas where it is empowered to do so by the constitution. Areas where the EU has exclusive competence include ensuring free movement of people, goods and services, as well as customs policy, trade and monetary policy in the 12-nation eurozone.
The EU would share competence with member-states in a range of other areas including agriculture, energy, social policy, public health and justice and home affairs, the text said. In areas such as industrial policy, employment, education, sport and culture the union would have a supporting role, with member-states having the main say.
The section on citizenship says all EU citizens would be citizens of the union as well as of their own country, with the right to vote in European Parliament and local elections in any other member-state where they may reside.
This proved too much for veteran Danish Eurosceptic Mr Jens-Peter Bonde, a member of the European Parliament.
"This is a one-way street to an EU state. This track will lead us to a deeper level of integration than in the United States," he said in a statement. "Bavarians have joint nationality (of the state of Bavaria and of Germany) but it is the federal German nationality that predominates."
Mr David Heathcote-Amery, a British Conservative member of the convention, echoed Mr Bonde's fears. "This (text) will create an even less democratic EU, full of politicians and even more remote from the ordinary voter."
Members of the forum, which groups national and European lawmakers and officials, have until February 17th to comment or propose amendments to the text drafted by the presidium steering the convention's work.
The convention aims to present a final draft constitution to the 15 EU governments by late June. The governments will have the final say on the text.