German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country wants to revive the European Union's stalled constitution, warned today of the risk of a "historic failure" to end the stalemate on the charter.
Ms Merkel said Germany would aim by the end of its six-month presidency of the 27-nation bloc in June to offer a plan to resolve a deadlock over a constitution which supporters say is vital to the functioning of an enlarged EU.
Angela Merkel
"It is in the interest of Europe, its member states and its citizens, to bring this process to a successful conclusion by the next European Parliament elections in early 2009," Ms Merkel told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
"A collapse (of that process) would be a historic failure," she said of efforts to break a stalemate created in 2005 when French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed charter in referendums.
Merkel made it clear her scepticism about more referendums, rejecting a call for a pan-European plebiscite. The treaty can only enter into force if all 27 member states ratify it.
Ms Merkel has sought to play down expectations for Germany's presidency, aware that her ability to relaunch a Union in the political doldrums may hinge on factors beyond her control.
With French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair set to leave office this year, Ms Merkel has emerged as Europe's most influential leader. But German officials say what she can achieve depends on who is elected French president on May 6th, almost two years after French and Dutch voters stopped EU institutional reform in its tracks by rejecting the draft constitution in referendums.
Conservative French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy wants to cut back the treaty to a few key reforms - a long-term EU president and a foreign minister, a more democratic voting system and more power for national parliaments.
His Socialist opponent, Segolene Royal, whose party was split in the referendum, argues Europe must prove its value to citizens through practical economic and social projects before focusing again on institutional issues.
Analysts and politicians said at the time the "No" vote, particularly in France, partly stemmed from concerns migrants from the new member states of the east would take away jobs in western Europe.
Ms Merkel also signalled that efforts to reconcile the EU need to guarantee its energy supplies with policies to tackle global warming would be at the heart of Germany's presidency, and issued a call to Washington to help the EU begin work on a new international accord on climate change.
"The EU needs the United States ... to lay the foundations for a post-Kyoto agreement on climate change," she said of an envisaged new accord to apply from 2012.
The EU executive Commission last week laid out a new energy strategy, in which it announced what it said were the world's most ambitious goals for fighting climate change, targeting a cut of greenhouse gases by at least 20 percent by 2020.
Ms Merkel reiterated her calls for closer trade and investment ties with the United States, saying Brussels and Washington should continue to cut barriers in areas such as patent rights, industry standards and in stock market access. "A common trans-Atlantic market is of the utmost European interest," she said in the speech.
Aside from difficulties with France and the Netherlands, Germany also faces an uphill struggle convincing governments elsewhere in the bloc to back its efforts on the constitution. Britain, Poland and the Czech Republic, which promised referendums but never held them after the French and Dutch said no, have got cold feet about the treaty, diplomats say.