Set for 2006: e pluribus Europe

Foreign policy, for example, remains one of the major areas where the EU can make policy only by consensus rather than by majority vote under the draft constitution. "If one country can stop everything in European foreign policy, Europe won't play a role any more in international affairs," worries Elmar Brock, head of the conservative bloc, the largest in the European Parliament. "It will be too weak."

Convention members and political analysts agree, however, that the draft constitution has one major merit: it clarifies in a single text the multiple and overlapping provisions of four different treaties that have left most European citizens confused about how the European Union actually works. "It is not an easy read, but it is readable," says Stefaan de Rynck, spokesman for Michel Barnier, one of the two European Commissioners at the convention.

Under the constitution, the European Council, made up of 25 heads of government, sets overall strategy for the Union, the European Commission drafts laws, and the Council and the European Parliament legislate between them.

The expanded 732-member parliament will have the power of veto or amendment over legislation in twice as many fields as it currently does, and for the first time the Council will legislate in public, rather than behind closed doors. The Council will have a permanent president, rather than the rotating six-month presidency that currently renders coherent policymaking difficult and deprives the Union of a single face to present to the rest of the world.

To prevent gridlock on the 25 member Council, some 50 new policy fields have been made subject to "qualified majority voting," ending the possibility of a single country casting a veto. And a complex system of "weighted" votes, depending on a country's economic size, will be replaced by an easier calculation: to pass the Council, a law will need a simple majority of members representing 60 percent of the Union's population.

Observers caution that the existence of a constitution will not itself be enough to change governments' behavior. The article stipulating that "member states shall actively and unreservedly support the Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity," for example, was lifted from an earlier treaty. But that did not prevent EU countries from differing over their attitudes to the war in Iraq.

And the current text itself is subject to revision by the Intergovernmental Conference that starts in October, where delegates will seek to clarify ambiguities and make the constitution operational. Giscard d'Estaing has warned governments not to try to revise too much, for fear of opening a Pandora's Box of objections.

"The deal was difficult," says Linda Mcavan, a British Labour Party delegate to the convention. "To unravel bits would endanger the delicate balance we reached, and I hope they don't unravel the whole thing. This is high stakes for the European Union. If it falls into paralysis for institutional reasons, it would be a disaster."

Intergovernmental conference members hope to finish negotiations by next spring and then send the document to countries for ratification. The target effective date is 2006.

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