EU constitution: Making sense of Europe

EU foreign ministers are meeting this week, in a fresh attempt to hammer out an agreement on a new constitution for Europe before a mid-June deadline.

All this week our Europe correspondent Tim Franks is looking at what the text means. In the third of his series he asks: has it made Europe easier to understand?

Giscard d'Estaing chaired the European convention

Why do we need a new constitution for the European Union?

The idea goes back nearly three years - to a meeting of the EU member states where they decided that something had to be done about the disaffection that the union was increasingly held in.

The plan was to bring Europe closer to the people - to make it more transparent and democratic.

'Poetic and desiccated'

The people charged with doing that - under the chairmanship of former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing - came up with a draft constitution.

In the 7x10in (17x25cm) version, it is 350 pages long.

It flits between the poetic and the desiccated.

It has been criticised for being both - which is unfair. If it had aimed for the sweet concision of the American constitution, it could not have spent 141 pages explaining how the union's power should be circumscribed.

And compared with the impenetrability of the previous treaties, much of this reads like an airport novel.

But some criticisms are harder to dodge.

The preamble - the bit that is meant to start your chin gyrating with emotion - does rather read as if it has been badly translated from a Latin greetings card.

Even the apparently technocratic can disappoint.

MEPs will have a say in about twice the number of policy areas

When it comes to the detail of pan-European judicial co-operation, a British official holds Article 3/171 between his finger and thumb at arm's length and asks - what does "establishing minimum rules concerning the rights of victims of crime" actually mean?

The constitution does at least attempt to meet that other great criticism of EU business - that it all happens "over there", behind closed doors, with little accountability.

The forum for the member states, the Council of Ministers, will meet in public when it looks at new legislation.

The European parliament will have its own say on legislation in roughly double the number of policy areas that it does now.

There is still a tussle as to how much say the parliament should have over the annual budget of the EU: some member states, including Britain, think that MEPs will only be too keen to spend everybody else's money.

Grand objectives

What the constitution will not do, though, is satisfy those who fear that the power of the EU continues to grow.

True, the ambition that has been in every previous treaty - the push to "ever-closer union" - is gone.

But grand objectives remain.

The text may stand; the arguments about what Europe is for will burn on

Take Article 40. This talks of the "progressive framing of a common Union defence policy", leading to a "common defence", when the member states "acting unanimously, so decide".

That may seem self-evidently true - that if all the member states decide they want something as hugely significant as a "common defence", they can decide to do it.

But is the very fact that it is there, suggest there is an irresistible pressure to do it?

The constitution is peppered with these possibilities, many of them repeating age-old aspirations.

The man who oversaw the drafting of this document said that he wanted it to stand for 50 years.

The text may stand. The arguments about what Europe is for will burn on.

Part Two: Power struggles

Part One: Blueprint for superstate?