Leaders of the three Benelux countries have formally condemned proposals

Date: 08/02/1996

to restrict the six-month rotating EU presidency to the Union's five largest countries.

At a special summit in The Hague yesterday, Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude Juncker warned that if the idea promoted by France's ruling Gaullist party became official French government policy during the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), it would send out “a very bad signal”.

Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene insisted there was no evidence that larger EU members ran the presidencies more successfully than smaller ones.