ROME, DEC. 14, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The failure to agree on a European Constitution is due to an ideology that puts political agreements ahead of values, said an official of the Convention of Christians for Europe.
In a press statement, the group criticized the result of the Inter-Governmental Conference that ended Saturday without agreement on the system of voting in the European Union, blocking the approval of the draft Constitutional Treaty.
Ireland, which will hold the EU presidency during the first semester of 2004, must now continue the talks among the governments. No date has been set for further analysis of the draft.
«The lack of agreement on the European Constitution represents the failure of an ideology that would like to construct Europe by removing its Christian roots and trusting only in political calculations,» said Giorgio Salina, vice president for Italy of the Convention of Christians for Europe.
The statement reproached the Italian government, current EU president, for having sought a «high profile» agreement on technical questions that blocked the approval of the convention, and accepting an agreement of «very low profile» that rejects the mention of the Christian roots in the preamble.
The Christian group proposes a return to the plan of the leaders who launched the process of European integration after World War II — Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman and Alcide De Gasperi, all of them Christian politicians — in order to base the European Constitution on «shared values» and «rules of coexistence that respect the effective equality and dignity of all its members.»
