Prodi Under Fire for Federalist Proposals

The European Union needs greater powers and a simpler constitution to help it play a bigger role in the world and be better understood by its citizens, the commission president Romano Prodi said yesterday.

But his proposals immediately put him on a collision course with the bigger members, including Britain, which want individual countries to maintain a grip on how the union functions.

The commission's submission to the convention on the future of Europe included calls for increased powers for the commission in almost all areas.

Days before the Copenhagen summit admits 10 more countries to the union, Mr Prodi argued that the status quo was simply "not an option".

His plan attracted sharp criticism from Britain. "For the EU to work effectively at 15, and still more at 25, 27 or 28 [members], its institutions have to work with the grain of the nation state, not against it," Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said.

Privately, officials in London were even more scathing. "They are flying a kite which will hit the ground with a bump," sneered one Whitehall source. "This is Lord Prodi of Kamikaze."

The former Italian prime minister was also attacked furiously by his colleagues in Brussels for having separately issued a secretly drafted EU constitution, bizarrely codenamed "Penelope", without discussing it with them.

The two British commissioners, Neil Kinnock and Chris Patten, the Italian competition commissioner Mario Monti, and several others let it be known that they were incandescent at this breakdown of collegiality on what Mr Prodi insisted was just a feasibility study.

The formal proposals, which will be reviewed by the 105-member convention, chaired by the former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, are intended by the commission to help it regain the initiative from member governments, which have been making the running in recent months.

Mr Prodi bluntly rejected Tony Blair's idea of a powerful president of Europe and said his own successors in Brussels should be elected by the European parliament.

He also went against current trends by saying that the six-month rotating presidency should be kept.

"We must build the world's first true supranational democracy. Speaking with one voice is essential to defend Europe in a globalised world and to promote our values."

A key feature of his plan is the idea of creating an EU "secretary for foreign affairs" who would answer to both the commission and governments, and also be the EU's single voice on the world stage.

Confusingly, this role is currently split between the holder of the presidency, the foreign affairs and security chief Javier Solana, who is responsible to member states but has a tiny budget, and Mr Patten, the commissioner for external relations, who holds the purse strings.

This idea appeals strongly to Germany and small member states, but is anathema to Britain, France and Spain.

Equally controversially, Mr Prodi said that majority voting should be the norm.

"The first point is to abolish the requirement for unanimity," he said.

"If the veto has frequently brought paralysis with 15 member states, think what could happen with 25 or more."

He suggested that decisions on taxation, currently subject to unanimity, should require a majority of member states representing a majority of the EU's population.

On a limited number of sensitive issues, such as increasing the EU budget, three-quarters of states representing two-thirds of the people should be required.

Mr Prodi's submission is one of many being made to the convention, which is charged with drawing up a draft constitutional treaty for the EU by next summer.

Mr Giscard unveiled the convention's first official draft in October. It suggests sweeping changes, including replacing the term EU with "United States of Europe" or - if that is too ambitious - simply "United Europe".

Britain, which is taking the commission extremely seriously, has submitted its own draft constitution, written by a Cambridge law professor.