German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and visiting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said a few days before a European Union (EU) summit that they were against a EU constitution "at any cost." 

Berlusconi, also the European Union's current rotating president, said after a meeting with Schroeder that he was "55 percent optimistic" that European leaders would agree on the EU draft constitution.

He warned it would be a "grave mistake to wrap up the summit at any cost."

European leaders will meet in Brussels on Friday to try to approve the heatedly-discussed draft of the document that will guide the future development of the expanded EU.

The summit has been pitched as a "do-or-die" meeting as time runs out for European leaders to find a compromise on the draft constitution before the historic expansion of the bloc to include 10 new countries in 2004.

Schroeder and Berlusconi said on Sunday they were "uncompromising" over the distribution of voting power for EU members.

Schroeder said there should be "limits" for the consultations. "The limits are clear," he said. "The EU commission must be so assembled that it is still able to lead. And Europe must be functioning and able to make decisions."

The dispute over voting powers in EU decision-making remains the main stumbling block with Spain and incoming member Poland fighting to hold onto weighted voting as agreed to in the Nice Treaty in 2000.

Germany and France, backed by a majority of present and future member states, are pressing for a reform of the voting system to take greater account of population size.

The current disproportionate voting powers awarded at the EU summit two years ago gave Spain and Poland 27 votes each compared to 29 for the largest states including Germany, which has more than twice their population.

On Sunday, Schroeder told Berlusconi he had no intention of budging on his country's opposition to Spain and Poland's position.

Germany adhered to its stance that decisions regarding the EU should be made by a "simple majority" of the governments that represent 60 percent of the EU population, said Schroeder.

The two leaders said in a meeting that a failure at the summit of EU leaders in Brussels later this week could not be excluded due to differences over voting power distribution.

Analysts say the issue of voting powers is such an acrimonious one that it threatens to derail the entire constitution process. A failure of the summit will mean the consultations on the new constitution will continue into next year.

Drawn up by a convention of national representatives headed by former French President Valery Giscard d'Etaing, the draft constitution proposes a "double majority" voting system in which most decisions would pass if backed by a simple majority of states representing 60 percent of the population.

But Spain and Poland, with considerably smaller populations than the three big EU members -- Germany, France and Britain -- are under enormous pressure at home to fight for weighted voting which would give them a bigger say in EU affairs.

Berlusconi, whose job it is to find a compromise, has called the Spanish-Polish voting power an "anomaly," which needs to be reformed. But the Italian leader, who has openly hoped to end his much-criticized six-month presidency on a positive note, said he was prepared to hand over the problem to his successor Ireland rather than accept a watered-down constitution.

Giscard d'Etaing, too, has said it would be better to have no constitution than a mutilated one. An ineffective charter could lead to "the gradual falling apart of the European Union," he warned.

(China Daily December 9, 2003)