Beware gesture politics

Date: 12/09/1996

THE trouble with empty gestures is that they can do more harm than no gesture at all.

That is the risk that EU leaders are taking in deciding to go ahead with plans to hold a special summit to discuss the Intergovernmental Conference early next month - two weeks earlier than originally mooted - despite the marked lack of progress in the negotiations so far.

EU leaders have already tried twice to inject momentum into the talks from above: at the Turin summit which launched the IGC process in March and again at their gathering in Florence in June. Neither achieved its goal of galvanising the negotiators into action.

So what is to say that next month's Dublin summit will be any different? Is there not a danger that holding such a high-profile meeting when there is so little of substance to discuss could backfire, highlighting and entrenching divisions over EU reform rather than injecting new vigour into the talks?

That danger has been significantly increased by the decision to hold the summit on 5 October, just three days before the British Conservative Party begins its annual conference in Bournemouth. With a general election looming in the UK, Premier John Major will be anxious to avoid doing or saying anything in Dublin which could be seized on by the Tory Eurosceptics to reopen the wounds over Europe which pose a real threat to his party's chances of winning another term of office.

Indeed, those who favour closer European integration could be playing straight into the hands of the UK Eurosceptics and their allies in other member states if, as feared, the summit does more to underline the divisions between EU governments over the Union's future than to boost the chances of a successful outcome to the IGC talks.

Ireland, current holder of the EU presidency, has long expressed doubts about the wisdom of holding such a summit now, fearing it could cast a long shadow over attempts to achieve real progress at the next meeting of EU leaders in December, when Dublin hopes to table an outline of the new treaty in draft form.

Surely it would have been wiser for EU leaders to wait until then instead of once again indulging in gesture politics.