After 18 months’ hard work by the 105 delegates from 25 countries who drafted the proposed constitution for the European Union, followed by months of discussions between national governments, the EU’s leaders gathered in Brussels on a weekend (12 – 14 December 2003) to iron out their remaining differences and agree on a final text. But by lunchtime of the first day, it had become clear that no agreement was possible on the main sticking-point—member countries’ voting strengths—and the talks collapsed. Now the proposed constitution may not be revived for months, if not years.

The collapse of the talks has inevitably led to talk of a "crisis" in the Union. Indeed, the chances of reviving the proposal in the short term do not look good.

To avoid constant stalemates at EU summits as the Union expands (from 15 countries now to 25 next year and perhaps over 30 some day), the final draft of the constitution had proposed a "double-majority" voting system, in which changes to EU law would be passed if more than half of member countries, representing at least 60% of the EU’s population, supported them. But Poland, backed by Spain, objected to this and insisted on keeping the voting arrangements agreed at the Nice Summit in 2000, which give them almost as many votes as Germany despite each having only about half its population.

Germany had strongly supported the double-majority voting proposal and grumbled, after the collapse of the talks, that it might now be less inclined to bankroll the EU’s subsidies to poorer member countries. On December 15, it joined five other rich EU states in calling for the Union’s budget in 2007-2013 to be capped around the current level of 1% of member states’ combined national incomes. The European Commission had been expected to boost its spending after ten new and relatively poor members (including Poland) join next May; the commission’s president, Romano Prodi, complained that the proposed budget cap would leave it short of money.

Ironically, the proposition on voting arrangements that sank the draft constitution was one of its more sensible ideas. In most other respects, the document was a disaster. Constitutions are supposed to give citizens a clear and concise explanation of the powers—and the limits to the powers—of the principal organs of government. However, the long, rambling draft produced by the 105-member European Convention was so vague on how it assigned powers to various institutions that at times even convention members themselves could not explain it. And the EU’s principle of "subsidiarity" (devolving decision-making so it is as close to the people as possible), far from being strengthened, was undermined by making it subordinate to the Union’s objectives, which included various types of "cohesion" (read Brussels-led harmonization).

As the convention members tried to satisfy everyone, their draft constitution ended up riddled with botched compromises, anomalies and absurdities. For instance, it entrenched in law the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, which gives workers the right to free job-placement help. But then, after British objections, this "fundamental" right was restricted to only about half the EU’s workers. Shortly before the summit collapsed, Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, won agreement to remove from the draft some of the most contentious proposals to increase the EU’s encroachment on national sovereignty. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, who chaired the summit, accepted Blair’s insistence that member countries keep their vetoes on such issues as tax, social security and judicial cooperation, instead of introducing majority voting as the draft constitution had proposed.

Europe’s leaders did not seem terribly upset at the failure of their summit. The Polish Prime Minister, Leszek Miller, and his Spanish counterpart, José María Aznar, returned home having successfully defended their countries’ voting rights. Blair was no doubt relieved no longer to have to face strong public pressure for a referendum on the constitution, which he might well have lost. Berlusconi brushed aside widespread criticism of his handling of the talks, arguing that they had not been a complete waste of time because agreement had been reached on most points of contention.

There was even a conspiracy theory that France’s president, Jacques Chirac, was happy that the constitution flopped, despite ostensibly pushing for it to be approved. Worried about a loss of influence in an enlarged EU, France is pushing for the formation of a "hard core" of countries, led by itself and Germany, which would forge ahead with deeper integration. As he made clear at the end of the summit, the collapse of the constitutional talks gives Chirac an excuse to pursue this objective.

However, it may be easier said than done. Some proposals, such as unifying the core countries’ criminal-justice systems, present huge challenges. The existing EU treaties limit the ability of any group of member countries to push ahead without the others. Furthermore, both France and Germany have already undermined their credibility as Europe’s leaders by having blatantly breached the EU’s stability pact with their big budget deficits.

Coming at the end of a year in which the EU’s biggest countries were bitterly divided over Iraq, the stability pact was undermined, Sweden rejected joining the euro and Britain put off its currency decision indefinitely, the collapse of the talks has inevitably led to talk of a "crisis" in the Union. Indeed, the chances of reviving the proposal in the short term do not look good. Ireland, which takes over the EU’s rotating presidency in January, seems likely to take a cautious approach. The German-led threat to curtail EU subsidies may not be enough to force Poland and Spain to accept cuts in their voting power. If the constitutional issue is pushed into 2005, it might then face the obstacle of a British general election in which it would surely emerge as a key issue.

So it is not impossible to imagine the idea of an EU constitution quietly slipping off the agenda. But there are bound to be efforts to fish it out of the bin and have another try—and they seem more likely than not to succeed at some point. If so, a few years’ delay may be no bad thing. Since one of the constitution’s main purposes was to facilitate the smooth running of an enlarged EU, it seems not such a bad idea to wait a while to see what problems emerge after the ten new members join next May before setting the Union’s governing principles in stone.

Why were the French ready to let the talks fail? One answer may be that they are increasingly disillusioned by the soon-to-be enlarged EU of 25 countries and are drawn instead to the idea of a "core Europe", in which a small group of countries, led naturally by France and Germany, press ahead with deeper integration. The French were particularly shocked by the temerity of new members such as Poland lining up with America in the run-up to the Iraq war. The collapse of the constitutional talks may allow the French to insist that an enlarged EU will be unworkable, so that a core Europe is needed.

As a clincher, the French had their own reservations about the draft constitution. Three years ago Chirac had insisted in Nice that it was vital that France and Germany retain the same number of votes. Adopting the double majority would mean abandoning that principle. And Chirac has been facing pressure, including from his own prime minister, to hold a referendum on the new constitution.

What happens next? There are three broad possibilities. The first is that the talks are revived and a compromise deal on the constitution is reached. The second is that a hard core of countries will break away, perhaps outside the established structures of the EU, to form an inner group committed to "political union". The third is that efforts either to revive the constitution or to form an inner core both fail, leaving the EU to stumble along in an atmosphere of increasing acrimony.

Yet these concessions to Britain will harden opposition in France, and they have also enraged federalists. Spain’s elections in March will not help; ditto the European elections in June, after which the Dutch take over the presidency. Further ahead, the calendar gets worse. By the end of 2004, the EU will be deep in negotiations on its next multi-annual budget, a perennial source of acrimony. The Germans have already threatened to punish Spain and Poland by playing hard-ball on regional spending. Just after the summit, Germany and five other net contributors, including France and Britain, issued a letter calling for the EU to limit spending to 1% of GDP. By the end of 2004, the EU is also due to say if it intends to open negotiations with Turkey over eventual membership, an issue that is bound to be bitterly controversial. As if all that is not enough, in 2005 there may be a British election (with a British EU presidency to follow).

So much the better, respond those pushing for a core Europe. Enthusiasts for this idea have been emboldened by the Brussels failure. But the political and legal obstacles look formidable. Most plans for a core Europe are based around the six founder members: Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. But the Italian government has made clear that it is not interested in joining a new inner core; and the Dutch were on the pro-American side of the debate over Iraq and are angry with the French and Germans for trashing the stability-pact rules restricting budget deficits in the single-currency zone. Even the Germans may hesitate about a core Europe that appears to set its face against Poland. Cooler heads in Berlin know that a lasting rapprochement with Poland must be in Germany’s strategic and economic interest.

It is also hard to see exactly where a pioneer group could forge ahead. The euro area embraces 12 countries, and all new EU members are in theory obliged to join. Could there be deeper economic co-operation or tax harmonization without such big euro economies as Italy and Spain? Closer co-operation on foreign policy and defense is also tricky. The French and Germans often say that European defense co-operation would be meaningless without the British, and Britain has signed up to the latest efforts to create an EU military-planning cell. But a defense arrangement that includes Britain, which is in neither the single currency nor the EU’s border-free Schengen area, could hardly be the core of a political union.

Finally, there is a legal problem. The Nice treaty allows groups of countries to forge ahead in specific policy areas—a process called "enhanced co-operation"—but only if there are at least eight of them and they first secure the agreement of all other EU countries. In today’s poisoned political atmosphere, that would be hard. That might mean that any pioneer group has to evolve outside the present EU structures. Far from furthering the cause of European unity, a pioneer group could in that case simply split the EU.