EU CONSTITUTION CELEBRATIONS TO COST €191,000

The European Parliament will spend €340,000 on a pro-EU constitution information campaign over the next two years.

MEPs are expected to give overwhelming support to the EU constitution in a vote on Wednesday.

And the bill for post-vote celebrations at the Strasbourg session will total €191,000 in one week alone.

Parliamentarians have told EUpolitix that decorations on the outside of the Strasbourg parliament building will cost €58,000.

Music, balloons and banners inside will cost EU tax-payers €33,000.

The price of hotels and chauffeur driven cars for 20 hand-picked journalists from countries set to hold EU constitution referendums will total €100,000.

A majority of MEPs are expected to lead 'yes' campaigns across the EU over the next 18 months.

Speaking in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Richard Corbett MEP, who co-drafted Parliament's report on the constitution, told MEPs ratification would allow the EU to “upgrade from a 15 seat mini-bus to a full sized coach with seats for 25 and more”.

The centre-left UK MEP stressed that the constitution would make Europe more effective, with more decisions taken at the EU level, and would giving Europe a ‘foreign minister’.

Inigo Mendez de Vigo MEP, Corbett’s constitutional co-pilot, argued the constitution will “remove the so-called democratic deficit from the EU, clarifying and strengthening roles at all levels of government”.

Both MEPs said they were confident of that the parliament would vote in favour of their report.

During the debate, centre-right EPP-ED leader Hans-Gert Poettering said the his group would be giving an unreserved "yes" to the treaty, a view echoed by Martin Schulz, leader of the Socialist group and Andrew Duff on behalf of Liberals.

“This resolution gets the story right,” said Duff. “All delegations of the ALDE group will be supporting it.”

"The main argument for the constitution is that it strengthens the EU. It enhances our capacity to act at home and abroad, and makes us able to stand on our own feet in world affairs and shape Europe's response to globalisation in a political way.”

Schulz argued that the constitution represented the unprecedented success of the EU as supranational democratic organisation.

The EU constitution must be ratified unanimously by all 25 member states by autumn 2006 - either by a parliamentary vote or national referendum.

Two of governments that opted for parliamentary ratification have already held the necessary votes in their national parliaments.

Lithuanian MPs voted in favour on November 11 2004, followed by Hungary in a vote on December 20 where parliamentarians overwhelmingly backed the constitution.

So far ten member states are planning to hold referendums.

Madrid is first up - On February 20 Spain is expected to approve the treaty in a referendum, followed by Luxembourg on July 10.

More difficult polls lie ahead in France and the Netherlands, expected during the first half of 2005, Britain, and Denmark early 2006, and Poland, and the Czech Republic where so far no date has been set.