Cowen warns against rejection of EU treaty

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Brian Cowen, has warned against viewing proposals for a new EU constitution through a "narrowly national prism".

Speaking at the National Forum on Europe today, Mr Cowen, said the treaty, agreed last month by the Convention on Europe, represents a compromise but one that preserves Ireland's key interests.

He said: "There is no conflict between Ireland's interests and the wider European interest: on the contrary, it is within Europe that we have grown and developed, and it is within Europe that we will continue to progress.

"This does not mean meekly following the lead of others, or not standing up for ourselves," he added.

Mr Cowen warned that any assessment of the treaty "conducted through a narrowly national prism will be fatally incomplete".

He admitted that although the Government had a number of concerns with areas of draft treaty but he expected it to remain relatively unchanged at the end of the InterGovernmental Conference.

The InterGovernmental Conference, which will have final say on the proposals, will begin discussions in October.

"We have, like other states, a number of continuing concerns, including in the foreign policy and defence area, and in relation to the voting procedure in the criminal law area," Mr Cowen said.

Mr Cowen told the Forum that although the work of the Convention had been easy to follow "polls suggest that many of the people of Europe appear not to have heard of it - let alone to know what it has been doing".