"Wake-Up Call For Europe"

In the European Union, decisions are made according to a process that was designed for six countries in 1957.

Reform is evidently overdue and 105-members have gathered in Brussels to discuss the way forward.

How the institutions will function when up to 10 new members join in 2004, finding new ways of making the EU more democratic, whether Europe can actually defend itself and come up with a common foreign policy: those are the central issues at stake.

The European convention aims to draft a blueprint for reform. But the problems they face in coming up with a formula that suits all member states are formidable.

To the outside world it must seem a bit like a talking shop in which the usual suspects squabble over democratic fundamentals:

How much power should individual states retain and how much should be handed over to a federal authority?

Broad divisions arise. Those who, like the founding fathers of the European idea, favour greater integration and hope the convention will give birth to a United States of Europe. They are the federalists.

Vehemently opposed to that notion are the anti-federalists, who will try to fend off any such attempt and try to repatriate EU power back to the member states.

Big countries muscle in

Just days before the constitutional convention opened, pro-integration Germany and Euro-sceptic Britain launched a joint initiative, forming an unusual alliance.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told Die Zeit weekly newspaper that he and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had proposed ways to overhaul EU summits and ministerial meetings because they were the bodies they were most involved in as national leaders.

"I want Europe to work, its institutions to work well and to have competencies clearly defined from each other," he said.

Schroeder wants the executive European Commission to be strong and efficient and said once enlargement took place, every country could not expect to appoint a commissioner.

The German chancellor also said he wanted the convention to consider how the European Parliament could better control the Commission and also to clarify what areas the EU was responsible for and where each nation state should maintain control.

Although he faces national elections later this year, the chancellor denied he wanted more decision-making influence in the EU.

Candidate countries participate

The 13 candidate countries, 10 ex-communist states plus Cyprus, Malta and Turkey, are taking part in the convention, giving them their first real chance to influence how the EU operates.

Eastern European states set to join the EU are likely to seize the chance to help chart the bloc's future and leave behind a history of being dictated to by foreign powers.

The first ex-Soviet bloc states will not actually enter the EU until 2004 at the earliest but they argued that it would be unfair to exclude them from Convention discussions.

The convention is likely to produce a document which will push for more integration. But the proposals contained in the document will then have to be debated at the national level and more importantly, ratified by national parliaments.