Accusations fly after EU failure

Recriminations are flying thick and fast in Sunday's European press following the failure of the latest EU summit to agree a new constitution.

Fingers point in blame throughout the continent, not least in the countries where the fault lines are the most marked.

Spanish papers take the French and Germans to task, although the Italian prime minister receives particularly short shrift in one leading daily.

The most inflexible country has to be France. El Mundo

"The person most to blame for the disaster was the chairman of this European Council, Silvio Berlusconi, a specialist in glib, bad jokes but useless when it comes to conducting complex, multilateral negotiations," says Madrid's El Pais.

El Mundo singles out the French president for criticism.

"Chirac rejected in advance any sort of compromise with Spain's position. If we are looking for the most inflexible country, then it has to be France."

Anachronistic

Madrid's ABC also points the finger at the proposed constitution's draughtsman, Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

"France and Germany, with the support of the Convention's president, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, wanted to secure the vision of an anachronistic and impossible Europe."

Germany's Der Tagesspiegel blames the Poles.

"The Brussels summit fails due to Poland's national interests," it accuses.

Polish arrogance Adhesmevtos Tipos

"The EU summit in Brussels has made it clear that Europe is not as yet unified, as so many had hoped."

Leading Greek daily Elevtheros also condemns Poland and Spain for "placing their egos above the EU's interest".

Another Greek paper, Adhesmevtos Tipos, carries a commentary headlined "Polish arrogance and the US role".

"It is on the strength of full US backing that Poland allied itself with Spain, threatening to blow the European Constitution sky-high".

Italy's Corriere della Sera fears that "EU remains without a compass" after the "summit fails".

"It seems a replay of many other summits that have not gone too well, but this time a devastating bomb has fallen on the European edifice," the paper says in a front-page editorial.

"The Europe that wanted to speed ahead is stopped on an incline."

There was no presidency capable of reconciling such differentiated interests Corriere della Sera

Another commentary in the same paper is reluctant to lay the blame for the summit's collapse at the door of Italy's EU presidency.

"The summit was a puzzle too complicated for anyone, at this stage," it says. "There was no presidency in the Union at this time capable of reconciling such substantial and differentiated interests."

'Profound crisis'

"Europe's failure", says the front-page headline in Italy's La Repubblica.

"The outcome of the intergovernmental conference in Brussels, dedicated to finalising and approving the document prepared after a year-and-a-half of hard work by Giscard d'Estaing and his Convention, could not have been more disastrous," says a front-page commentary by the paper's founder and former editor, Eugenio Scalfari.

Scalfari sees the current deadlock as emblematic of a "much more vast and profound crisis" in a European Union which, he believes, "has lost its soul and its values."

France's Liberation also believes "The EU is in crisis".

"EU countries again showed they are incapable of sharing power in an enlarged Europe."

Le Monde accused the Polish prime minister, Leszek Miller, of "intransigence in his defence of the voting system".

Conciliatory

In Poland, the press quoted the country's leaders as taking a conciliatory line over the situation.

Rzeczpospolita quoted President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Prime Minister Leszek Miller as saying Warsaw had "taken co-responsibility in the creation of the EU constitution".

The Poles have no reason for a bad conscience Aftenposten

"We will continue to work towards agreement," Gazeta Wyborcza quotes Mr Miller as saying. "Despite obvious differences our relations with Germany are our top priority and are of strategic importance. Germany is our great political and economic partner," Mr Miller said.

In Norway, outside the EU, the leading daily Aftenposten speaks of "yesterday's fiasco".

"The Poles have no reason for a bad conscience. Two of the most enraged last night, Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, are themselves no strangers to putting national interests ahead of what they call European interests. The history of EU is full of crises where someone has put their national interests first."

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.