It is hard to decide which is the most ludicrous of the articles of the forthcoming EU constitution, but article 14 must be a contender. Back in October last year, the Praesidium of the European Convention produced its opening draft. The Praesidium is a group of magnificoes who have been meeting in Brussels, under the direction of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, he of the Bokassa diamonds. You may think Praesidium a pompous and fittingly Soviet-sounding word for mainly has-been European politicians. But the Praesidium clearly believes its members will be seen as the founding fathers of a new and rather superior country. It is a country called Europe, and we are all to be its citizens.
It is the Praesidium’s historic function to bless that country with a constitution, and to that end its members have been groping for uplifting language, even if the effect is unintentionally comical. Under article 14 of the new constitution, which will become a fortiori the constitution of the United Kingdom, there must be a ‘common foreign and security policy’.
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