Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard gives a few details of the proposed EU call-it-anything-but-a-constitution. Here’s an extract:

One would have thought that the French and Dutch had driven a stake through the heart of this animal. Commission chief José Manuel Barroso said as much. But no, Berlin has unwisely brought it back from the dead to haunt Europe. Unwise even for Germany, the great winner under the proposed voting structure. Mrs Merkel’s démarche has already opened a feud with Poland, but it will not end there. Her letter suggested sneaking the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the text “by a short cross-reference having the same legal value”. Why does this matter? Because the Charter gives the European Court (ECJ) jurisdiction over a raft of social and economic rights that are alien to our Common Law. It empowers Euro-judges to chip away at Britain’s economic model, imposing Rheinland corporatism by the back door. We might as well turn the lights off in the City if the ECJ ever gets its claws into that. Beware of Europe’s court, the unseen engine of EU federalism. For now it is confined to “community” matters: the single market, competition rules, and so on. It has no say on the wider fields of foreign affairs, defence, justice, and criminal matters, and little say on economic management. The text smashes the old structure. Everything becomes fair game, unless specifically exempted. Euro-judges would, for example, decide the meaning of Article 1.15 forbidding states from foreign policy and defence actions deemed “contrary to the Union’s interest”. The Falklands? Iraq? Forget it…

What’s fascinating – and sadly unsurprising – is the way that Chancellor Merkel, in a nod to her East German past, has made it clear that the peoples of each EU nation are not to be trusted with a decision on this matter. Instead her aim has been to sneak this not-a-constitution-no-not-at-all through, clothed in lies, wrapped in deception and obscured by ambiguity. If we could catch a glimpse of old Erich Honecker in his current, presumably rather sulphurous abode, he would, I think, be smiling.

According to Evans-Pritchard, all is not lost, however.

It is far from clear that such a cynical coup can be pulled off, even if EU leaders agree to a relaunch this week. The details will have to be thrashed out over coming months, opening up a hornets’ nest. This time the Poles will have a veto, and they are in no mood to oblige an ever more muscular Germany. French president Nicolas Sarkozy wants changes that are anathema to the free-trading belt of Britain, Holland, and Scandinavia. He has to assuage all those “No” voters at home, even if he is denying them a fresh vote. His answer? “Community preference”, a tariff bloc to fend off globalisation. Utter regression.

Ah yes. Sarkozy. The modernizer. I remember him.