Blair: End EU constitution crisis

12 April 2012

Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for Europe's constitutional crisis to be resolved as quickly as possible to give the Union a new set of rules for the future.

But he warned that EU leaders could not simply brush aside the fact that Dutch and French voters delivered a resounding "no" to the original constitution plans nearly two years ago.

The EU has been rudderless ever since - but the celebration summit delivered a clear pledge to get the project back on track.

A new EU mission statement - the "Berlin Declaration" - proclaimed: "We are united in our aim of placing the EU on a renewed common basis before the European Parliament elections in 2009."

Without mentioning the constitution by name, the document amounts to a new timetable for agreeing sweeping reforms to streamline decision-making and renew creaking institutions unable to cope with an EU of 27 nations - compared with six at its launch on March 25, 1957.

Eurosceptics have accused integrationists of using the need for change to railroad through a full-scale federalist constitution, ignoring growing public disquiet about the scale of the ambition.

Mr Blair told a press conference after the summit that the EU did need new rules to cope with its size.

But he went on: "The sooner this is resolved the better, be under no illusion about that. We need more effective rules, but there have been two 'no' votes in France and the Netherlands and we have got to be realistic about that."

Summit host Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, made clear the rejection by French and Dutch voters of the planned constitution will not stop the EU project.

"It is true that anyone who hoped that 50 years after the Treaties of Rome we would have a Constitutional Treaty will be disappointed, " she said in her anniversary speech to the other EU leaders.

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