A two-day meeting over a draft constitution for the future European Union has been marked by clashes between bigger nations and smaller ones over who will hold the real reins of power as the EU expands into Eastern Europe next May.

The delegates of the Convention for the Future of Europe, who gathered in Brussels at the end of this week, are racing against time to broker a compromise for the document that will be the legal underpinning of a new 25-member European Union. The draft is to be presented to EU leaders at a summit on June 20-21.

The constitution is designed to simplify the way the EU works in advance of its biggest ever expansion. Many of the rules governing the Union were originally created for the six founding members of the European Economic Community in 1957.

Some of the 105 delegates saw the meeting in Brussels as a David and Goliath story writ large. Smaller states like the Benelux countries and Austria accused giants like Germany and France of riding roughshod over their concerns in supporting a controversial future framework that smaller members feel would cement power in the hands of the “big five”—France, Britain, Spain, Germany and Italy—and relegate the small countries to the sidelines.

Big vs. Small

The main contention has centered around a suggestion put forward by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, former French president and head of the EU Convention (photo, right, with Romano Prodi), to appoint a long-term president to the European Council, the EU’s main decision-making body.

Giscard d’Estaing has said such sweeping reform of the system is necessary if the bloc, which expands from 15 to 25 member states next year, wants to avoid decision-making paralysis. He says a president appointed from the ranks of former national leaders for terms of up to five years would give the EU continuity, instead of the current “musical chairs” system in which the Council presidency rotates among member states every six months.

But smaller states suspect that such a redesigned presidency would be dominated by the big states. Since the Council president chairs EU summits and helps set the bloc’s strategic course, smaller nations fear the new structure would cement larger members’ hold on power. They also fear the Giscard d’Estaing plan would weaken the role of the European Commission, the body which proposes laws and enforces common EU policies.

“So far 101 members of the convention have presented a petition against the long-term Council president, 15 governments,” said Austrian delegate Johannes Voggenhuber. “Isn’t that enough, or are we going to have to labor over this plan, which enjoys no majority and never will have a consensus, for weeks.”

Deal in the Works?

Despite the strong differences of opinion expressed over the past two days, delegates from Britain and Germany have said they see the outlines of a compromise deal between the two positions emerging.

“There is a big contrast between the negotiating poses struck in public and what I know to be the case in private. I know there is a deal there to be done,” Peter Hain, the British government representative told Reuters. He said privately almost all of the smaller countries had told him they accepted that they had to “do a deal” on the presidency.

He and German foreign minister Joschka Fischer suggested that a plan to strengthen the European Commission might help seal an accord with the small states. The idea would streamline the EU executive and have its president elected by the European Parliament.

“We’re not far from something we all can agree on,” Fischer said.

An EU Foreign Minister?

On Friday, delegates backed a plan to create an EU foreign minister post, in part to boost the EU’s global profile and to have a single person coordinating the Union’s common foreign, security and defense policies. Under the draft plan, the new foreign minister would combine the jobs of Javier Solana, the EU’s current foreign and security policy chief, with that of Chris Patten, the EU’s commission for external relations, who controls the foreign aid budget.

France has thrown its support behind Germany’s top diplomat Joschka Fischer (photo) as a candidate for the likely new post. Fischer’s boss, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker have also spoken out in his favor.

The 55-year-old Fischer is leader of the Green party in Germany and has been the country’s foreign minister and vice-chancellor since 1998. He won high praise and international recognition for his skillful mediation between Israel and the Palestinians.

Fischer, however, is playing down any suggestions that he will be moving to Brussels, saying he is happy being Germany’s top diplomat.

A Long Last Spurt to Ratification

While the draft proposal is supposed to be submitted to EU leaders at the summit in Greece in July, diplomats have said only the first part of the draft constitution may be ready by then.

Greece’s foreign minister, George Papandreou, has said that suggestions to extend the Convention past the July deadline in order to give delegates more time to work out controversial points is a “logical proposal.”

After the draft is completed, EU governments will then have until spring to thrash out differences. A new EU constitution will only come into force when all 25 members have ratified it. That is not expected until 2006 at the earliest.