A taste of things to come

Date: 12/12/1996

SUMMING up the state of play in negotiations before they have reached their final stage is always a dangerous moment for any chairman.

If skilfully done, it can bring the prospect of agreement closer as areas of consensus are emphasised and sticking points isolated.

But misjudge the mood around the table and the prospects of a successful conclusion may recede over the horizon as delicate compromises begin to unravel.

In trying to bring some clarity and order to nine months of negotiations on a revised Maastricht Treaty, the Irish government has successfully avoided the pitfalls of the latter scenario.

Its 140-page outline for a draft revision of the EU's treaties is a pragmatic mixture of proposed legal texts and a snapshot of the different arguments being paraded in the debate over controversial issues such as institutional reform and a more flexible Union.

As usual, critics were quick to condemn aspects of the document released last week.

Its call for the removal of border controls by the suggested date of 2001 ran into opposition in the UK, while Denmark signalled its hostility to any suggestion that the European Commission be given a greater say in foreign policy and external economic relations.

But French Foreign Minister Hervé de Charette stood virtually alone in mounting a sweeping attack on the draft, accusing its authors of lacking ambition.

“It mirrors the mediocrity of the negotiations so far,” he complained.

De Charette's negative tone was outweighed by the widely favourable reception the text received, even - for the most part - from the Union's two most sceptical members: the UK and Denmark.

This has ensured the Irish presidency has met its main objective of not blocking off any options in the negotiations and has reduced the risk of this weekend's Dublin summit degenerating into a bout of constitutional haggling.

The generally calm atmosphere is a far cry from the frenzy which engulfed the original Maastricht Treaty negotiations five years ago when the then Dutch presidency presented its openly ambitious draft proposals for a more federal Union.

Those proposals also appeared after nine months of meetings between Intergovernmental Conference negotiators. But instead of reflecting the various different views on the EU's future, the Dutch tried to influence the discussions by setting out a clearly defined route.

The Irish have resisted this temptation, as their IGC chairman Noel Dorr explained last week.

“We have tried to make the text coherent and comprehensible, balanced and ambitious. It is not confrontational, nor is it the lowest common denominator, and it is not the product of a secret process the presidency has been separately engaged in,” he insisted, adding: “We are offering this as our best judgement of what may offer scope for agreement with further work.”

The draft proposes a large number of amendments to existing treaty texts and tables over 30 proposed new articles, including two new treaty chapters.

The first would cover the free movement of people, asylum and immigration; the second, on employment, would establish a process to coordinate national job-creation measures.

An example of the Irish presidency's attempts to steer a prudent course between ambition and the lowest common denominator emerges from its presentation of negotiations on the progressive establishment of an area of freedom, security and justice.

This carefully seeks to establish a balance between abolishing internal border controls and strengthening Union action against the very threats - organised crime, illegal immigrants and drug traffickers - which defenders of identity checks at frontiers argue make them necessary.

In a bid to inject some political impetus into attempts to win approval for the various measures required, the presidency text floats the idea of setting a target date - 2001 - for putting the necessary legislation into place.

The draft text also confirms the general, but not universal, belief among negotiators that the European Parliament's powers “need to be consolidated as regards both its political and legislative action”.

But apart from suggesting that MEPs be given the power to approve the nominee for the post of Commission president, it does not itemise where their legislative powers might be extended.

At the specific suggestion of other governments, the Irish also agreed not to include in their draft any proposed treaty texts on changes either to the way the Council of Ministers takes decisions or to the size of the Commission.

Their decision reflects a belief among all the IGC negotiators that if the talks are to have any chance of a successful outcome, such complex issues will be the last pieces of the IGC jigsaw and will certainly not be slotted into place this side of a British general election.

In a clear attempt to avoid the mistakes of Maastricht and win over a sceptical public, the Irish text is deliberately presented in a user-friendly format.

Under the overall title “Adapting the European Union for the Benefit of its Peoples and Preparing it for the Future”, each section has a general introduction, references to specific treaty articles and brief comments.

“We want it to be readable. Citizens have to be involved and we wanted a text someone could pick up and find understandable,” said one Irish diplomat.

The text also provides a revealing insight into the breadth of issues and pet topics which individual member states are trying to write into the revised treaty.

In addition to the three core areas of institutional reform, justice and home affairs, and foreign policy and security, documents on a further 17 subjects have landed on the negotiators' desks.

The most energetic country has been Belgium, which has tabled five proposals designed to increase the Union's responsibility for energy, education, public health and vocational training policies.

The sensitivity of linguistic issues in this trilingual country is also demonstrated by its move to ensure that every citizen has the right to use his or her own official EU language in contacts with Union institutions and bodies.

The UK is in second place, with four proposals. These include its traditional concern for animal welfare - a concern which has already seen a declaration on the protection of animals attached to the Maastricht Treaty - but the politically most significant is the UK's demand for a reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).

London insists the treaty must be changed to outlaw quota-hopping, a practice which has seen Spanish fishermen benefiting from quotas originally allocated to the British fleet, and has threatened to block the whole IGC package if this aspect of the CFP is not reformed.

Other proposals similarly reflect the particular interests of individual governments.

Greece is championing the cause of island regions and tourism, Spain, France and Portugal are concerned about the fate of the Union's outermost regions and Germany is determined to protect the rights of local authorities.

Among the more unusual requests is Bonn's proposal that the revised treaty should specifically respect the constitutional status of religious associations in the various member states.

The Irish presidency openly admitted last week that a number of these ideas had not yet been discussed, and suggested that some would probably fall by the wayside and others added in the months ahead.

But the IGC negotiators will be forced to consider them during the Dutch presidency as - for some governments - they are the icing on the cake which will make the revised treaty more palatable to their electorates.