Forex Investment

THE German chancellor, Angela Merkel, will make the revival of the dormant EU Constitution a top priority in a speech today outlining her country’s goals during its six-month presidency of the union.

Germany has set numerous goals in its 25-page programme for the EU presidency, including everything from securing Europe’s energy supplies to outlawing Holocaust denial, improving Europeans’ image of the bloc and getting serious about climate change.

It is an ambitious agenda and it will be discussed extensively in roughly 4,000 EU internal meetings and 40 additional conferences with non-EU countries over the next six months before Germany passes the presidential baton to Portugal in June.

But there is one issue that is on everyone’s mind - the moribund EU Constitution. Germany’s progress on finding a compromise regarding that will be a major benchmark used to judge Berlin’s success. The C-word is as sensitive as ever across Europe. Britons don’t want it, French and Dutch voters rejected it in a referendum and many hoped that it had been buried in a Brussels cellar at the EU HQ.

But Mrs Merkel is planning on making an acceptance of it in a new form a central plank of the German presidency.

“Expectations toward the German presidency, and Angela Merkel in particular, are incredibly high,” said Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform. “She seems to be very good at listening to people and bringing everybody on board, but whether she is really good at forging consensus - that remains to be seen.”

Yet hammering out a constitutional deal will be particularly difficult for Germany as it is among the treaty’s strongest supporters and is likely to be viewed as a biased mediator. French elections, scheduled to be held shortly before the German presidency comes to a close, will also complicate negotiations.

Mrs Merkel, who surprised many at her first European summit as German chancellor by brokering a deal on the bloc’s budget, could make some headway on deciding which parts of the constitution EU members are in favour of saving, according to the German Marshall Fund’s Ulrike Guerot.

“Things can go quickly if they are well orchestrated, and I think the ambition of the German presidency to get a clear road map for the constitution is a realistic goal,” Ms Guerot said. But Berlin faces a huge task to convince the 26 other national leaders to build a consensus.