TIMESONLINE: President Sarkozy’s sleight of hand in removing one of the European Union’s key objectives almost slipped through the final meeting of the 27 nations’ top diplomats preparing for the Brussels summit.
The so-called sherpas took five hours on Tuesday night to go through the draft German proposals line by line. It was a Hungarian diplomat who saw that something was missing.
The failed EU constitution proposed that the EU shall have “an internal market where competition is free and undistorted”. The phrase was included to make free competition one of the objectives of the EU, upgrading its status from the Treaty of Rome, where it features as a sub-clause.
Minutes from Tuesday’s meeting seen by The Times show that, near the mid-point of the discussions, the Hungarians drew attention to the redrafted statement. It included commitment to the internal market but omitted the phrase “where competition is free and undistorted”. Sarkozy secretly tried to rewrite rules on Europe: Germans were persuaded to slant statement in favour of protectionism (more) By David Charter and Charles Bremner
Mark Alexander
