France and Britain have won their campaign to keep the national veto at the heart of European foreign policymaking, dashing hopes of a big switch to majority voting.

The move will come as a blow to those who think the EU can only work effectively on the world stage if it ends the system where foreign policy has to be agreed unanimously.

But Valery Giscard d'Estaing, president of the European Convention, will on Tuesday reveal that he accepts that the veto should still be available to member states.

The Iraq crisis severely damaged Europe's attempts to speak with one voice, prompting Mr Giscard d'Estaing to observe: "Europe does not have a common foreign policy."

But he has discounted calls from the European Commission for foreign policy to be treated more like other areas of EU policy, where majority voting is the norm.

Today Mr Giscard d'Estaing's inner team, or praesidium, will present the final details of the first full draft of the new EU constitution, which must be completed by June 20.

Earlier drafts said foreign policy could be decided by majority voting where there was a joint proposal from the Commission and the new EU foreign secretary.

But the new draft will make it clear that member states will still have to act by unanimity in deciding where the EU should have a common policy - for instance in the Middle East or the Balkans.

Only where heads of government ask the EU foreign secretary to draw up detailed plans to implement the common policy would majority voting apply.

"Qualified majority voting has been weakened in the praesidium," said a spokesman for the Commission. "I am sure that many people in the convention will be disappointed."

The new arrangements will please France and Britain, which will also win guarantees in the new treaty that they will keep their seats on the United Nations Security Council.

Another controversial foreign policy proposal - creation of an EU diplomatic service - will also not feature in the treaty, although it could still be created informally under a different name.

Britain and Ireland have also succeeded in watering down another proposal to reduce the national veto in the sensitive area of tax harmonisation.

The new Giscard text says that the EU could decide to use majority voting on policies to tackle cross-border fraud and trans-European co-operation on tax administration - but only where member states first agreed unanimously to move in that direction.

However, even that concession is not enough to satisfy Gordon Brown, UK chancellor of the exchequer, who argues that the same mechanism could have left Britain isolated in the debate over a new EU savings tax, and that the City of London could have been forced to adopt a highly unpopular withholding tax.

The draft of the new treaty - which has to be approved by heads of government before becoming law - has made a number of concessions to British fears about a drift towards a "federal Europe".

Supporters of more EU integration warn that Mr Giscard d'Estaing has gone too far in appeasing big member states such as Britain and France, and that he can expect a backlash in the 105-member convention later this week.

But the fine print of the treaty, to be published today, could include a number of measures designed to appease supporters of a federal Europe, including moves to extend EU co-operation in the field of social security.

Most members of the convention think the new treaty goes well beyond what Peter Hain, the British government representative, calls a "tidying up exercise", but few think it marks a giant leap forward towards European integration.

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