Brussels, 29/12/2005 (Agence Europe) - In an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 29 December, the Austrian Minister for foreign affairs, Ursula Plassnik, who will chair the Council of the EU starting on 1 January 2006, announced that she would visit to Paris on 10 January and The Hague on 11 January (on 9 January, the Austrian Presidency is to receive the Barosso Commission in Vienna). When asked about the European Constitution, Ms Plassnik pointed out that the Austrian Presidency would "assess the national debates on this subject and propose options on what to do next". "We will try to develop a common choreography", she said, taking up the expression used before the press in Brussels (EUROPE 9093). Can we expect a new debate on the hardcore, in the wake of the book published recently by Guy Verhofstadt? "This would not surprise me at all", the minister admitted, warning: "personally, I do not see how such proposals could bring a solution (...). The awareness of belonging to a united Europe of 25 is precious (...). The current rules offer enough room for manoeuvre (...) for differentiated models of integration". Ms Plassnik is, in any case, relieved by the agreement on the financial perspectives, even though the task ahead of the Presidency is far from easy. At the summit, the protagonist was Angela Merkel, Ms Plassnik acknowledged, explaining: she behaved like somebody with no fear of "complexity", she "gave everybody, large and small (...), the impression that she was making an effort to find a solution (...). She proposed a figure of 1.045% and that, at the end of the day, is what we ended up with".
In an interview with Le Soir of 27 December, the Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, spoke along the same lines about the German Chancellor: "she spared no effort. I was there during the talks with Chirac and at no point did I get the impression that she was prepared to leave the Franco-German camp. But she was also able to get other States on board, with talent and energy (...). The Franco-German axis remains vital, but it is not strong enough to be the only one; other alliances must come into being or remain solid, such as the one between Belgium and Luxembourg". As for the Constitution, Mr Juncker said: "let us look at which parts can be applied ahead of time. As long as this does not mean the death of the treaty. Because I am not abandoning the constitutional vision of Europe". He went on to propose the prior application of the provision of the Constitution whereby if one third of the national parliaments consider that the Commission is wrong, they can oblige it to review its copy. This will prove that Europe "is doing what comes under its competencies", he said, adding: "let us take inspiration from the catalogue of competencies retained by the constitutional treaty". In another interview, with Libre Belgique of 29 December, Mr Juncker admitted that he was not a fan, à priori, of the idea of a hardcore, but went on to say that if, in a few years time, it turns out that "on certain ambitions, a certain number of States (...) cannot or do not want to go along with the rest (...) of those which have the most ambition, my second-best choice would be the hardcore".