Grand vision, or costly talking shop?

Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing has compared his assembly with the one that set out the U.S. Constitution

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The Convention on the Future of Europe being launched in Brussels on Thursday could lead to a historic breakthrough in the history of the European Union.

Or it could prove to be a hideously expensive talking shop to end all talking shops.

The new body will deliberate for more than a year before making recommendations to the 15 EU member states.

Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a surprise choice by EU leaders to head the convention, is no spring chicken at 76.

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But he points out that Benjamin Franklin was over 80 when he participated in the Philadelphia Convention, the body that set out America's Constitution.

The not-so-subtle comparison flatters the EU body, which will be made up of more than 100 parliamentarians.

Several EU nations are highly suspicious of having an EU constitution at all, and want to settle for something less grand -- more a statement of aims than a formal structure.

But the 15 EU heads of government -- who regularly get together with leaders of the 13 countries hoping to join their club -- know that a Europe of 28 simply can't go on making decisions the way it does now.

Indeed, unless the EU changes its ways, there's a danger the enlarged union won't make any decisions at all.

However, the all-night squabbles at the Nice summit in December 2000 -- the last time the EU tried to make changes to cope with the enlargement to come -- do not bode well for the new consultative body.

And Scandinavian countries join Britain in resisting efforts to curb the use of the national veto and introduce qualified majority voting in more key areas like taxation and social security.

Lord Brittan, formerly a senior European commissioner, sees difficulties in the very structure of the new body.

"It's not just representatives of governments, but representatives of oppositions, representatives of Parliaments and representatives even of countries which aren't yet members of the EU, so you have to suck it and see," he told CNN.

"Nobody's tried this approach before, and I don't envy Giscard d'Estaing, who has to try to see if he can get some kind of consensus out of them."

Heather Grabbe, research director of the Centre for European Reform, says the EU is too inclined to talk about institutions, when it should be concentrating more on policies.

"It tends to debate theological points about the role of the institutions, the balance of power, rather than thinking about delivering practical benefits into people's daily lives," she said.

Grabbe fears there will be disputes between small countries and large ones, like those that emerged at Nice as the "smalls" accused the bigger powers of ganging up on them.

Then there could be divisions between the richer countries of the north and the poorer Mediterranean countries over who foots the bill for subsidies.

"The problem is everybody's trying to seek safeguards for what they want to keep in the union," Grabbe says.

"For example, the smaller states want to keep the European Commission because it protects their interests in the treaties. The larger states are much more interested in efficiency and being able to work better and take decisions more quickly, so they would like to have a core of member states able to push on, for example, with foreign policy."

Currently the EU has a Parliament of 626 members, a decision-making Council of Ministers headed by a different country every six months, and a Commission of 20 to run the civil service.

The UK for one is suggesting changes. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wants a bigger, two-chamber Parliament, a slimmed down super-council with an end to the six-month terms, and a much smaller Commission. But smaller countries are suspicious of such ideas.

A key question for the new convention is how to make European institutions more user-friendly, with many European citizens -- like Britain's so-called metric martyrs, who are fighting to go on using pounds and ounces instead of kilos and grams -- objecting to having laws forced on them at a supra-national level.

The convention will be expected to pronounce too on the question of EU "competences." The EU nations will be looking to it to recommend what powers should be exercised at union level and which should be left to the nation states.

The battles will be conducted at considerable cost -- and in the EU's 11 languages at that.