EU urged to produce rescue plan for constitution

VIENNA, May 27 (Reuters) The European Union must come up with a plan by mid-2007 to rescue a constitution project stalled by voter rejections last year in France and the Netherlands, backers of the project urged today.

Germany, due to take over the presidency of the 25-member bloc early next year, said it expected to be tasked to produce such a solution by the end of June 2007, a few weeks after general elections are due to be held in Paris and the Hague.

''We should tackle the question of the constitution with more self-confidence,'' said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, arriving for talks on how to end the stalemate on the charter, aimed at boosting European integration.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said a ''road map'' on how to revive the constitution was needed within the year if it was to come into effect any time soon. He cited 2009 as a possible timeframe.

But others at the meeting in the Klosterneuburg monastery just outside Vienna were more circumspect, with British Europe Minister Geoff Hoon whose country sees the project as all but dead warning against hurrying a decision.

''There is no agreed way forward and it is right we should look long and hard at possible solutions,'' he told reporters.

Despite the French and Dutch rejections a year ago, 15 countries have ratified the charter, highlighting the split in the bloc over a text designed to streamline EU decision-making and boost its foreign policy clout.

''We are not going to be clarifying the legal fate of the constitution today,'' Ursula Plassnik, foreign minister of current EU President Austria, acknowledged ahead of the talks.

MOOD OF CRISIS The deadlock has robbed the bloc of its most ambitious project for the future and sown a mood of crisis in Brussels.

A recent poll showed barely half of Europeans see EU membership positively and many were concerned about the bloc's policy of inviting poorer states from the east to join.

Foreign ministers in Klosterneuburg were to study how to win back popularity for the EU by studying how they can increase cooperation in specific fields.

One proposal to be discussed is a plan to boost cross-border cooperation in crimefighting by removing existing national vetoes over EU initiatives in the politically sensitive area.

Other citizen-friendly proposals include ideas to pool European consular resources available to travellers caught up in natural disasters, such as the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia which hit thousands of European tourists.

The chief victim of the constitution deadlock has been the policy of EU enlargement, blamed by some politicians as fuelling eurosceptic feelings among citizens and as a key factor behind the French rejection of the EU charter in particular.

The EU has taken a tougher tone towards would-be members. Last week it delayed until October a decision on whether Romania and Bulgaria can join the bloc in 2007, urging them to do more on administrative reforms and tackling organised crime.

For future aspirants from Turkey to the Balkans, it has stressed that even if they fulfil all the criteria for entry, the EU itself may not be economically and politically ready to take them in.

REUTERS SY PM1751