Convention delegates are beginning to think about how their own draft version of a new EU constitution will be received by citizens back home.

There is a growing fear that after all the work spent drawing up this treaty blueprint, it will be rejected at a later point by national parliaments or citizens in a referendum - a concern that has started to influence the debate in the Convention.

With an eye on his national audience, which notoriously rejected the Nice Treaty, Irish government representative Bobby McDonagh Wednesday pleaded for not including the word federal in the first article - suggested by the Convention's presidium.

Similarly Peter Hain, UK government representative, said "many countries are going to have to win referenda."

He warned that he did not think that some convention members "should hang [their] hat on the term federal," - something which the UK would not accept.

Other convention members saw this simply as a pretext for not including what has already been a long established basis (the current treaty has a reference to an ever closer union) in a future constitution.

Don't lie to the citizens
"We should not be frightened of our own shadows," said Commissoner Michel Barnier about being honest with the wording in the treaty.

"We should call a spade a spade," said the Dutch government representative, Gijs de Vries.

He added the Convention should not be governed by misinterpretation of the word 'federal' by British tabloids.

If his own people did not yet notice that that the EU functions on a federal basis - then the Convention should tell them, said Romanian Adrian Severin.

Green MEP Johannes Voggenhuber spoke of "deceiving" citizens if there is no reference to a federal basis.

Back to the drawing board
Jean-Luc Dehaene, chairing the informal session on Wednesday, conceded that the debate on the issue had not moved forward much.

This was also the case with the debate on religion where the same views on whether to include a reference to God were expressed again.

The presidium will now go back to the drawing board and try and produce something palatable to all.

However the long-winded debate with the repeated views again raised issues about how the Convention functions.

"We can throw this back and forth forever. How are we going to come to the point?" asked one presidium official.

The Convention is due to hand over its draft treaty in June.

EU-OBSERVER