Rupel Feels EU is Moving Away from Constitution
"The EU is currently moving away from the constitution, and is focusing foremost on concrete projects," Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said on the margins of a meeting of the EU's foreign ministers on Sunday.
"I have nothing stimulative to say about the EU constitution. Most of the participants wanted to focus on those provisions in the constitution which are seen as most favourable," Rupel said on the last day of the meeting, which took place in Klosterneuburg near Vienna.
"The constitution is now frozen, while the EU is searching for ways to react to the present situation," said Rupel, who does not believe that most countries want to keep the constitution in its present form.
"I was somewhat surprised that most of my colleagues implicitly assume that the right time for the European constitution is 2009, and that there will be no final decision before that," he added.
Rupel expects the debate about the EU constitution to include discussion on the structure of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU.
He moreover said that the ministers talked about several options, including a proposal of the Commission on the EU to adopt in 2007 a declaration which would help it launch the European project anew.
On Saturday, the first day of the meeting, Rupel already said that he believes that the period of reflection regarding the EU's constitutional treaty needs to be extended.
He has thus joined his counterparts from Austria and the Netherlands in calling for an extension of the period of reflection, a year after France and the Netherlands rejected the treaty in referendums, plunging the bloc into a crisis.
Rupel also called for continued enlargement of the bloc, saying that the process can continue without the constitution. He said Croatia was bound to become a full-fledged member, "but we have to resolve our (bilateral) issues in one way or the other."
In his support for enlargement, Rupel also thought that the EU should immediately launch separate negotiations with the newly-independent Montenegro on an association and stabilisation agreement.
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