UK tries its partners’ patience

Date: 30/05/1996

By Rory Watson

and Michael Mann

AFTER holding its fire for a week over the UK's high-profile campaign of blocking Union decisions requiring unanimous approval, the Commission has gone on the attack.

In a statement issued yesterday (29 May), the Commission declared that it “deplored” the tactics adopted by the British government and warned that its action was not “appropriate”.

“The Commission deplores that in the Council, certain dossiers which are not at all linked to BSE are being held hostage. This attitude is not appropriate in a community based on the rule of law,” said the statement.

Meanwhile, British officials were claiming that the strategy was working, with at least a score of EU policy initiatives torpedoed.

“People have been surprised by the range and number of items which have been caught by our policy. They acknowledge it is working and it brings home to governments the importance of the issues at stake,” claimed one.

An Italian EU presidency spokesman offered a more nuanced verdict, pointing out: “The other side of the coin is that the UK is continuing to take part in negotiations and the situation would have been more difficult if they had not.”

The non-cooperation policy faces a tougher test next week when four separate ministerial meetings on finance, social policy, agriculture and justice will take place in Luxembourg. They come as British Prime Minister John Major faces increasing demands from many within his own Conservative Party to call a halt to the campaign.

The fate of the policy, however, will be partly determined by next week's decision at a special meeting of EU farm ministers on whether to lift the current ban on the beef derivatives tallow, gelatine and bull semen.

If agriculture ministers do not lift the ban at the beginning of next week, the Commission will almost certainly do so a few days later, assuming a simple majority - eight out of 15 member states - vote in favour of doing so as they did last time around.

The indications are that, thus far, the British policy of non-cooperation has not led any member states to change sides.

But the UK is seeking more than a partial lifting of the ban before ending its war of attrition.

If the issue is not resolved over the next three weeks - and Major sticks to his guns - the biggest casualty of the campaign looks like being the first head of the future European Central Bank, Wim Duisenberg. The Florence summit is set to appoint the head of the Dutch central bank as the next president of the European Monetary Institute.

Under the Maastricht Treaty, the decision must be taken unanimously and a British official confirmed: “If we block it, it will be because we are blocking everything we can. We do not have any objection to Duisenberg per se.”

Next week is expected to see the UK blocking efforts to encourage greater participation by women in decision-making, plans to make 1997 the European Year Against Racism and moves to improve professional training certificates.

The UK also looks set to administer some more self-inflicted wounds. Earlier this week, it blocked moves by internal market ministers to improve administrative cooperation between member states and to simplify legal measures - both policies with which the British agree in substance.

When finance ministers meet on Monday (3 June), the UK is preparing to block a policy it has long championed - on-the-spot checks by EU anti-fraud officials - and to prevent the European Investment Fund from buying shares in funds which help small and medium-sized enterprises.

Overall, the past week has witnessed around 20 casualties in the British campaign, although it was already opposed in principle to many of the proposals.

The UK blocked five internal market initiatives, eight affecting overseas aid and three designed to improve civil protection coordination in the Union. It also prevented Intergovernmental Conference negotiators from agreeing to an extra meeting with the European Parliament's two observers and told the Italian government it would not consider itself bound by any further IGC papers tabled by the presidency. But the UK did agree to a procedural manoeuvre allowing three Third World aid programmes worth 330 million ecu to be approved by majority voting instead of unanimity.

Next week's meeting of agriculture ministers will see the start of what is likely to be a heated debate over how to divide up 650 million ecu from the 1996 budget to compensate beef farmers for losses caused by the BSE crisis.

The Commission's proposals would give a one-off 25-ecu top-up on the suckler cow premium and a 21-ecu top-up on the special beef premium. The remaining 116 million ecu would be distributed to member states as a lump sum, based on the size of their non-dairy cattle herds, for them to allocate. The largest recipient would be France, with 29 million ecu, followed by Germany with 19.3 million ecu, and the UK with 16.3 million ecu.