THE REOPENED debate on whether God and Christianity should be mentioned in a new European Union treaty was taken forward several more steps this week when Europe's Catholic bishops commissioned a report on the common values of the EU from a group of high-profile Catholic thinkers and politicians.

The group, which met for the first time on Monday, included three members of the previous European Commission - Mario Monti, Franz Fischler and Loyola de Palacio - as well as Jacques Santer, the former Commission president, and Pat Cox, former president of the European Parliament.

The starting point for the group's deliberations was that the EU is perceived as concerned almost exclusively with economic issues, so that the values on which it was founded have been neglected or forgotten.

These values, to do with peace, freedom, a rejection of extreme nationalism, solidarity, respect for diversity and subsidiarity (the idea that political decisions should be taken at the lowest possible level), all have connections to the Christian faith.

A spokesman for the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community (Comece) said that the setting up of the group was "indirectly" aimed at influencing a political declaration on the EU's values and ambitions that the Union's leaders are planning to adopt on 25 March 2007 - the EU's fiftieth anniversary.

The debate on Europe's Christian heritage as the basis of its common values was recently reopened by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who made a plea for including "God" in a new EU treaty text after visiting the Pope in August.

Mrs Merkel said at the time: "I underlined my opinion that we need a European identity in the form of a constitutional treaty and I think it should be connected to Christianity and God, as Christianity has forged Europe in a decisive way."

Comece's secretary general, Mgr Noël Treanor, said that apart from the work of the group of experts, European bishops are themselves set to discuss their stance on "God" in a new EU treaty, now that Mrs Merkel has reopened the debate.