CORRECTED - Merkel defends constitution ahead of Czech visit

26.01.2007 | , Reuters
Zpravodajství ČTK


perex-img Zdroj: Finance.cz

(changes attribution of quote in paragraph 8 to Klaus instead of Merkel)...

...

Europe needs its constitution to adapt to a changing world and ensure its success in the future, German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote in a Czech newspaper on Friday, just ahead of a visit to the central European country.

Merkel is using the German EU presidency in the first half of this year to try to revive a constitutional treaty agreed by the bloc's governments, but rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005.

She aims to achieve an agreement by June on how to revive the treaty in some form by 2009.

The constitution was meant to adjust the EU's decision making and institutions after rapid expansion from 15 to the current 27 members. It would have scrapped national vetoes in some areas and created a European foreign minister.

"I understand the Union as a formation that has to be developed further and adapted to the changing challenges, but it must not be fundamentally disputed if we do not want to risk the demon of extreme nationalism raising its head again," Merkel wrote in the leading mainstream daily Mlada fronta Dnes.

"To make these needed adjustments, the constitutional treaty was discussed for two and a half years at public sessions with the involvement of national parliaments and the European Parliament, and -- from the very beginning -- the new member states including the Czech Republic," she wrote.

But Merkel's call will likely fall on deaf ears in Prague where new right-wing Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and his Civic Democrats have consistently rejected the treaty and called for an entirely new one.

Later on Friday Merkel will meet Topolanek and dine with President Vaclav Klaus, an opponent of closer European integration. Klaus said after meeting Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Thursday "that the Constitution Charter in its present form is not to be used, it is not to be accepted".

Klaus has proposed creating a looser "Organisation of European States" to replace the EU.

So far 18 countries have ratified the treaty. Their representatives meet in Madrid on Friday to declare the document cannot be buried due to the Dutch and French referendums.

[PRAGUE/Reuters/Finance.cz]

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