EU treaty is 'cut and paste job' of constitution: British opposition

(LONDON) - Britain's main opposition Conservative Party slammed the new European Union treaty as a "cut and paste job" from the bloc's doomed constitution, and renewed calls for the document to be put before voters in a referendum.

"Now the first official English text of the new EU Treaty is out we can see clearly what a cut and paste job this is from the old EU Constitution," William Hague, the Tories' foreign affairs spokesman, said.

"Whole chunks are copied unchanged. Virtually everything that was in the old EU Constitution is in this treaty: the EU president, an EU foreign minister in all but name, the loss of vetoes and serious new powers for the EU over criminal justice."

Hague said that the Conservatives will, in the coming weeks, study the draft text word for word to specifically reveal how it proposed to transfer powers from Britain to the European Union.

The Tories also renewed their calls for a referendum on the treaty -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown's predecessor Tony Blair had promised to put the European Constitution before British voters.

French and Dutch voters rejected the text in 2005, however, removing the need for a referendum in Britain, where voters are particularly euroskeptic.

Brown has rejected the idea of a referendum on the treaty, arguing that it is not a constitution, and previous European treaties have not gone before the general public.

"Gordon Brown's case for breaking his referendum promise was already flimsy. It has just become even weaker," Hague said.

Several European leaders, including Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the father of the abandoned European constitution, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have said that the new treaty replicates the essence of the constitution.