To Germany falls the task of resurrecting the EU's constitution

(BRUSSELS) - Using the bulk of a treaty rejected by French and Dutch voters more than 18 months ago, Germany begins Monday the daunting task of resurrecting the European Union's moribund constitution.

During its six months at the EU's helm, Berlin must prepare a report for the bloc's leaders to use to chart a new way ahead for their European enterprise, but the government also aims to offer some solutions.

"The stuttering constitutional process is hindering our efforts in substantive areas," Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said this month, summing up the size of the mission, as he outlined Germany's EU presidency.

"The constitutional process has become a warning sign of Europe's paralysis. We must make determined efforts to overcome this," he said.

The document, painstakingly drawn up by hundreds of experts, was meant to streamline the way the expanding EU makes decisions and to keep it apace of globalisation or threats like terrorism and organised crime.

It has been signed by all EU leaders and ratified by 18 countries, including Bulgaria and Romania which become the bloc's 26th and 27th members Monday, but it has to be ratified by all states to legally take effect.

The "No" votes in the referendums in France and the Netherlands effectively scuppered the text, and ushered in a year-long "period of reflection" about Europe's blueprint for the future.

Part of the problem was the public perception of an elite and federal European superstate headquartered far away in Brussels. Another was fears that enlargement would continue unabated, with mainly-Muslim Turkey waiting to join.

Few leaders have dared publicly offer a way forward but with elections at the European Parliament due in 2009, they have all committed to taking decisions on how to advance the process in the second half of 2008.

"I would consider it an historic failure if we do not succeed in working out the substance of the constitutional treaty by the time the next European elections take place," Chancellor Angela Merkel said on December 14.

The question is, what course should Germany charter?

"What seems clear is that muddled compromise this time will not do and clear choices will be needed on a number of fundamental issues," the Centre for European Policy think-tank said in its December policy brief.

Clarity is, in chief, about winning public support for the European project.

"The Union's priorities should be to improve its record of delivering practical benefits to European citizens, and to explain better the benefits it already delivers," according to the Centre for European Reform.

"The EU should also strive to be outward-looking: it needs the ability to influence its neighbourhood, and to stand up for European values and interests in the wider world," the Brussels based group said in an EU reform "manifesto".

Germany's stated goals so far are modest.

"It will concern, more realistically, an agreed roadmap for the process to come, which we intend to supplement with the outline of a solution," said Steinmeier.

To do that, Berlin has appointed two government representatives to shuttle between EU capitals and the European Commission, the bloc's executive body, as well as to meet with "sherpas" designated by the member countries.

"This alone will be an extremely difficult job, but I am confident it will be one we can manage," Steinmeier said.

The task will also test Germany's mettle as an EU president because it will confront hostility to its own goal, which is to have the constitution retained pretty much in its current form, and have to prove that it is above the fray.