IGC veto poll under attack

Date: 19/09/1996

By Rory Watson

EU GOVERNMENTS will decide this week whether to admit to each other where they are prepared to surrender their national vetoes in Union policy-making.

The challenge has been launched by the Irish presidency in a bid to inject some genuine movement into an area of Maastricht Treaty renegotiations redolent with anxiety about national sovereignty.

Intergovernmental Conference chairman Noel Dorr's ploy of distributing a five-page questionnaire to flush out the degree of support for more majority voting on issues ranging from excessive deficits to the trade in arms has taken member states by surprise.

Irish hopes of establishing preliminary national positions at this week's session of the IGC group were dashed when several participants bridled at the suggestion.

They fear that the strategy could lead either to simplistic conclusions being drawn or tie governments' hands unnecessarily in talks which still have at least nine months to run.

“Our concern is not just that it could bind governments in the IGC talks, but that it could also bind them back home. The Irish will have to make changes to their questionnaire,” said one senior official involved in the negotiations.

Another, from one of the Union's big five member states, warned: “We see it as a first step to establish the state of play. But it does not mean member states will remain wedded to it. It will not commit us or bind us.”

Others have criticised the attempt to measure support for more majority voting on 69 separate and complex issues straddling 22 areas of EU activity against just three scales: “yes”, “no” and “willing to consider further”.

“A number of delegations said positions could not be determined so categorically. The questionnaire may be helpful to push things forward, but some delegations are not in a position to reply at this stage,” said a Nordic official.

The initiative has, however, won support from French European Affairs Minister Michel Barnier and the UK.

“When you see government positions across the board, it will be clear that the UK is not isolated in its opposition to more majority voting,” predicted a senior British official.

The Irish presidency played down the opposition, insisting the questionnaire was a purely informal way of trying to speed up the negotiations. It argued that its case-by-case approach was inevitable given the failure of governments to agree on more general, fundamental criteria for any extension of majority voting.

Irish officials insist they have set no deadline for replies, but hope the completed forms will be returned next week.

“We are really doing a trawl. We have thrown out a net. We shall pull it in and see how many fish we have in it,” explained a senior official.

Irish attempts to penetrate the determinedly defensive tactics of the IGC negotiators won strong support from Commission President Jacques Santer yesterday (18 September).

In an unusually outspoken attack on EU governments' delaying tactics, he voiced criticisms similar to those raised by the IGC Commissioner Marcelino Oreja last week.

“There is a question mark over the commitment of all the member states to facing the problems squarely and moving forward. A lack of dynamism, ambitions pitched too low - those are the impressions given by the discussions at the moment,” Santer told MEPs in Strasbourg.

With enlargement approaching, the Commission president spelt out a few home truths.

“The Union must stop acting as if it can afford to treat this conference as a dress rehearsal. The mind boggles at the idea of holding a second IGC, a play-off as it were, before the end of the century,” he warned.

Any postponement of difficult decisions would involve the Union in a complex set of interlocking negotiations on internal institutional reform, accession terms for new members and revision of its five-year budgetary forecasts.

Santer implicitly backed the Irish presidency's attempts to force open the decision-making debate. “Maintaining unanimity would kill the Union,” he insisted.