Brussels, 11/01/2006 (Agence Europe) - After a meeting in The Hague on Wednesday with Austrian foreign minister and head of the Council of the EU, Ursula Plassnik, Dutch foreign minister Bernard Bot said that the draft European constitution rejected by the Dutch and French in referendums last year was well and truly dead. Bok told reporters he had discussed the constitutional treaty with Plassnik, which as far as the Netherlands is concerned is, to coin a phrase, 'dead'. He said the Dutch would not be asked to vote on it again in a second referendum. He said that practical measures based on the Nice Treaty should be focussed on for the moment, adding that the Netherlands wants to take full advantage of the reflection period to 'listen to the people'. Plassnik said that following the EU budget deal last month, she noted a positive mood that had to be seized to try to revitalise the constitutional project and debate on the future of the EU.
The Dutch capital was the second step of Plassnik's European tour, which started this week. On Tuesday she was in Paris (France) where she hoped that at the 15/16 June European Council, the EU25 would agree on a 'common choreography'. At a joint press conference with French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, Plassnik said he plan was, where possible if there was sufficient will, to develop a type of common choreography to get out of the current impasse. Plassnik said it was natural, necessary even, that during this reflection period various conflicting views should be expressed (the most recent one being Jacques Chirac's idea on Tuesday of implementing various parts of the constitution based on existing treaties, see EUROPE 9106, and 9105 on statements in Vienna by Ursula Plassnik, Wolfgang Schussel and Jose Manuel Barroso).