A supranational European Union constitution is being built by stealth, writes Daniel Hannan, a minister of the European Parliament (mep).

May 29, 2005, was the day French voters deflated European integrationist dreams by voting “non” on the European Constitution, stopping it stone cold. However, the Europe that died that day was not the integrationist version, but rather, the democratic version.

Ever since the French, and then the Dutch, voted no, Brussels lawyers have been working to find a way to breathe new life into the constitution. With 18 out of 27 countries having already ratified the existing draft constitution, the last thing the Eurocrats wanted was to have to start the process all over again, and possibly face voters in some of those countries demanding referendums. At the same time, if the document remained unchanged, the governments of France and the Netherlands could not very well present the text to their citizens for a second vote.

To solve the dilemma, the integrationists have come up with a clever new plan—that, if successful, will not require any voter participation.

“We have the answer,” says Alain Lamassoure, a former Europe minister. “We shall go through the text with a rubber instead of a pencil. Many of the clauses are unnecessary, because they reiterate what is already in the treaties. But these are generally the articles that people object to. So, if we take out what we don’t need, we can avoid any new referendums.”

Indeed, three quarters of the European Constitution is a restatement of existing treaties; many of its clauses merely give legality to what is already being implemented within the EU. For example, the constitution treaty includes the clause, “This constitution shall have primacy over the laws of the member states.” However, in one form or another, this has been a functioning law in the EU since 1964.

As Brussels knows, it is many of those very clauses that caused the collapse of the treaty in the first place. “Our mistake was to spell everything out,” one senior German official brazenly admitted. In other words, pro-constitution officials regretted ever having given the people of Europe the opportunity to change those things they objected to.

The plan will be put to leaders of the 27 member states for approval next month at a meeting in Berlin. Stripped of the text that serves no function, the new version will be less than half the constitution’s present size. It will include the creation of an EU president and foreign minister, and changes in national voting weights.

The beauty of this plan, for Brussels, is that European national governments—including the French and Dutch—will be able to argue that this “mini-treaty” is too inconsequential to warrant referendums. And those that have already ratified the present draft will not have to begin the implementation process again, because there is nothing new in it. “The outcome,” write Hannan, “will be identical to approving the full constitution in its present form” (Telegraph.co.uk, February 20).

Presto! European integrationists will have their dream back on track.

One try at democracy was enough for the European Union, and now it is back to the old tried and tested, successful method of building a union of member states by back-door stealth and deception.