Finland ratificeert Europese Grondwet (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Finland ratified the EU constitution on Tuesday adding one more country to the list of member states having given the nod of approval to a document whose fate is still undetermined.

The parliament approved the constitution by an overwhelming majority with 125 voting in favour and 39 against, with the Finnish president still to sign off the procedure, expected sometime next week.

Finland's move makes it the 16th member state to largely complete ratification of the document and the sixth country - along with Latvia, Malta, Luxembourg, Belgium and Cyprus - whose vote comes after the shock 'no' referendums by French and Dutch voters last year.

Coming at a stage when some member states are quietly thinking about how to get all or part of the constitution back on track, the Finnish vote is a symbolic boost to the document.

Paavo Lipponen, the president of the Finnish parliament, said the vote had produced "an even greater majority of member states in favour of this treaty."

He added Finland has contributed to making a "front against tearing the treaty apart and starting from zero," amid expected re-negotiations of at least part of the document from next year onwards.

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said he "welcomes" Helsinki's ratification move. "This is a very good signal... It shows that our project is still alive," he told a gathering of national parliamentarians and MEPs in Brussels.

The vote is also a boost to Finland itself which as EU presidency is canvassing opinion in national capitals with a view to restarting discussions on the constitution.

It is the first presidency to systematically take on the issue since mid last year when EU leaders effectively put the constitution in no man's land by declaring a "period of reflection" on what to do next.

The reflection time was extended when it became clear that countries lacked the political will to tackle the issue with the burning question of how to reconcile those who had ratified the treaty, with those who had rejected it and those who have a strong chance of rejecting it in the future (such as the UK), remaining unsolved.

Although this and other tricky issues are still open, the constitution and what to do with it no longer appears to be a taboo subject.

Mr Barroso recently said to his colleagues that the commission should propose a new initiative to give the constitution another chance while Germany is set to pick up where Finland leaves off when it takes over at the EU helm in January.

Berlin has already indicated that it wants as much of the constitution saved as possible and is planning on working out a timetable which it hopes will see the constitutional reform process finished by the 2009 European elections.

However, chancellor Merkel's push on the constitution has been undermined by the fact that although the document has been approved in both houses of parliament, the German president has refused to sign it off due to a legal challenge currently in the country's constitutional court.

The other countries to have ratified the constitution are Hungary, Lithuania, Spain, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy, Austria and Greece.