EU draws up a draft 'constitution'

Chris Patten: Ruled out "journey to some ghastly superstate"

The European Union faces accusations that it is secretly drawing up a Euro-constitution following news that it is working on a document setting out its fundamental purposes.

People cannot go on pretending we're on a journey to some ghastly superstate

Chris Patten

Eurosceptics have attacked the move as taking the EU a step closer towards becoming a federal superstate.

The draft treaty is intended to rationalise the principles already set out in the Maastricht Treaty and the Treaty of Rome, putting in plain language the fundamental aims of the EU.

But European Commissioner Chris Patten, the Conservative former cabinet minister, has insisted the aim of the document is to set boundaries to the EU's powers.

No superstate

Mr Patten welcomed the document, which is being drawn up by a committee of experts.

The rough proposed treaty includes policy guidelines and also recommends mandatory membership of the single European currency.

It takes us further and further down the relentless one-way conveyor belt towards the superstate

Francis Maude

"I think it is time to have a statement of principals and a charter of competence, some people have even dared to call it a constitutional framework, setting out what should be done at a European level and what should be done at a national level," Mr Patten told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"We have to make clear in the treaty that there is no question of subsuming the individual nations in some other structure, so people cannot go on pretending we're on a journey to some ghastly superstate."

Cold War

But shadow foreign secretary Francis Maude said the new document would expand the EU's powers.

"It is still in the superstate model, the old bloc model, which is an outdated dogma, it is a relic of the Cold War," he told the same programme.

"What a modern Europe needs is to be enlarged, to heal the divide that disfigures Europe, separating eastern and central Europe from western Europe.

"We need a flexible Europe, with independent nations co-operating together.

"This document doesn't do that, it takes us further and further down the relentless one-way conveyor belt towards the superstate."

'Scare stories'

Europe Minister Keith Vaz insisted that the document was not a constitution.

Mr Vaz said: "I think it is important to define the limits, I think that's what people want to do.

"But this report was produced in May of this year, it's been around for quite a long time.

"The reason why people are getting worked up about it of course is that here's another opportunity for the eurosceptics ... to have a little dig and to produce some more scare stories about a constitution.

"A debate of this kind is perfectly acceptable and we will look at the proposals and we will have our own views," he said.

"I don't see what the fuss is about."

Certainty and transparency

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said said the time was right for a European constitution.

It would, he said, give certainty and transparency and "would certainly mean that the debate about the extent and limits of the existing treaties would no longer be conducted in the kind of arid and ill-informed way in which it is at the present".