Madam, - Those who argue in favour of the proposed EU Reform Treaty only weaken their case by constantly referring, even dismissively, to the document rejected by French and Dutch voters as the "now defunct European Constitution".
The title "constitution" was a misnomer conceived by Giscard & Co in a fit of folie de grandeur. Normally a constitution seeks to achieve permanence by including provisions that make it difficult to amend (e.g. by requiring a super-majority in parliament or a referendum). By contrast, there was nothing in the so-called European Constitution to prevent its revision by means of a further inter-governmental treaty, and the path to such a treaty would even have been smoothed by the "constitution's" easing of decision-making within the Union.
If the draft had not been saddled with that inflated title, I doubt if any of the member-states apart from Ireland would have bothered to hold a referendum on it. The sooner the pretensions of the failed draft are forgotten, the better can we concentrate on the merits of the Reform Treaty proposal, as Mr De Rossa recommends in his cogent letter of November 12th. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL DRURY, Avenue Louise, Brussels, Belgium.