Europarlementariërs dreigen een gewijzigde grondwet te verwerpen (en)

Members of the European Parliament on Wednesday (6 June) raised the spectre of rejecting any new EU treaty negotiated by member states they consider not ambitious enough.

"You've got to listen to everyone and not just those who want less Europe," said Spanish conservative MEP Inigo Mendez de Vigo, reported AFP.

"Our hands won't be trembling if we have to reject the treaty which comes out of the intergovernmental conference if we think it doesn't match our expectations," he went on to warn.

Jo Leinen, German socialist MEP and head of the constitutional affairs committee, said the parliament is against the idea of a mini-treaty and against a treaty with "all sorts of limbs cut off."

But both he and UK liberal Andrew Duff indicated the EU assembly would accept a "repackaging" of the essential parts of the constitutional treaty - rejected in referendums by France and the Netherlands in 2005.

The European Parliament's opinion on the finished text - they will only have their say on the new look treaty once member states have finished working on it - is not legally binding, meaning that technically national governments could forge ahead with it anyway.

However, a thumbs-down from MEPs, the only major EU institution with directly elected representatives, would be a major political upset and would be damaging to ignore.

According to Austrian green MEP, the parliament has so far "not been prepared to go to the wire" but it must now "stand up for what it believes."

The debate comes just two weeks before EU leaders gather for a crucial meeting on the rejected EU constitution. The German EU presidency is hoping the 21-22 June summit will secure a precise outline on what can stay in the new look treaty from the original constitution.

At the moment there are about 10 open issues. Berlin wants to secure agreement on as many of these as possible, leaving a handful to be taken over for on-going negotiations at member state level - known as an intergovernmental conference.

Among the most controversial questions are the proposed voting system and whether it should be changed (as Poland is pushing for) and whether the extension of qualified majority voting (less veto rights for member states) should be curbed.