Britain wants simple EU treaty that may avoid vote

LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) Britain has said it wanted any fresh attempt at a European Union constitution to produce as simple a document as possible that could be ratified without a referendum.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, holder of the EU's six-month presidency, wants to revive the treaty designed to streamline the workings of the increasingly unwieldy bloc that was rejected by French and Dutch voters in referendums in 2005.

''We think the best European constitution is a simle constitution,'' said a spokesman in Prime Minister Tony Blair's Downing Street office. ''The result of a simple constitution would be that we would not have to hold a referendum.'' The British government's aim - putting it on a collision course with Merkel - was for a text that could be ratified by parliament and avoid a popular vote, a British official said.

Blair said Europe needed to reform to be more effective.

''Provided the focus is on efficacy rather than on what can seem a very grand constitutional design, rather remote from people's real lives ... then it's a lot easier to see our way through it,'' he told a conference on Britain and the EU.

''I also think there's a whole series of ways in which decision-making needs to be streamlined.'' Britain would have to hold a referendum only if it contained elements of a constitutional nature or gave Brussels new powers.

Given widespread euroscepticism in Britain, the government fears it would lose a referendum on a treaty.

UP TO BROWN? The problem over a new constitution looks set to fall to finance minister Gordon Brown, expected to succeed Blair after he stands down by August at the latest.

Putting the treaty to a vote and then losing it would be a huge embarrassment for Brown. But avoiding a referendum would provoke the wrath of eurosceptics who accuse the government of trying to bring in a constitution through the back door.

The opposition Conservative Party accused the government of seeking to pull the wool over the eyes of the British public.

''It is vital that if the government is to sign up to a constitution that it is put to the British people in a referendum,'' their foreign affairs spokesman William Hague said.

Merkel's aim is to present a plan by the end of Germany's EU presidency in June for resolving the deadlock before European Parliament elections in mid-2009.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said Merkel was right.

''She knows there is no magical solution, no new treaty that can be pulled out of a hat and will command universal approval across the continent, but a start has got to be made to clear up the mess, the disarray that the 'no' votes (in France and the Netherlands) created,'' he told Reuters in London.

REUTERS PKS BST0500