Twenty European Union countries gathered in Madrid yesterday to pay homage to the bloc's "magnificent" constitutional treaty, amid warnings that those blocking the revival of the stalled text could be relegated to the slow lane of a two-speed Europe.

The so-called "friends of the constitution" argued that far from slashing the original treaty to make it more palatable to voters, it should be made more ambitious, giving the EU a bigger role in social policy, fighting climate change and immig-ration.