Dublin injects new impetus into IGC talks

Date: 11/07/1996

By Rory Watson

FOREIGN ministers will be asked to wear a specific Intergovernmental Conference hat for the first time next week as

the Irish EU presidency tries to shift the slow-moving negotiations up a gear.

In a symbolic break with the practice of the past three months, ministers will be invited to change venue at their meeting next Monday (15 July) when they turn their attention away from the problems of Bosnia, Russia and the Mediterranean and to the reform of the EU.

“We feel it is time for the discussions to take a different form and time to change the psychology of meetings. Ministers will move to a different room, the discussions will be more structured and there will be fewer people present. We want to give the sense that the IGC is not just another item on the General Affairs Council agenda,” explained one senior official.

The Irish government is also preparing to inject new impetus into the negotiations by presenting the IGC working group with practical examples of possible new treaty articles at each meeting and asking its members to negotiate specific wording instead of merely making more general statements of national positions.

This new approach will also get its first airing in Brussels next week when the group will be presented with provisional texts drafted by the Irish government and the Council of Ministers' legal service on the justice and home affairs section of the treaty and on the possibility of adding a specific employment chapter to the treaty.

Negotiations on a specific employment chapter in the revised treaty will underline the general difficulties the Irish government now faces in bridging conflicting national positions. While Denmark and Sweden strongly support such an initiative, it is equally vehemently opposed by Germany and the UK.

“You have those who are opposed and those who want this and the two are unlikely to come any closer until the end-game. But if you want proper discussion now, it should be on the basis of an article which those who want it could accept, while those who are opposed consider it the least bad option,” suggested one EU diplomat.

The style of the mini negotiating sessions is also expected to alter with the handover of the chairmanship from Italian diplomat Silvio Fagiolo to his Irish colleague Noel Dorr.

“Dorr is likely to ask blunt questions. Fagiolo never did.

Up until now people were allowed to say what they wanted to say and were never pressed to clarify any ambiguities. That is now likely to change,” predicted one participant.