IGC participants consider issues outside public debate

Date: 20/06/1996

By Ole Ryborg

This weekend's summit debate on the progress - or rather the lack thereof - in the Intergovernmental Conference negotiations will focus on high-profile issues such as the balance of power between the EU institutions, the extension of qualified majority voting and the development of a European defence identity.

However, the IGC is about far more than just that.

During the first three months of negotiations on the new treaty which will pave the way for the next round of enlargement, the Italian presidency has raised more than 100 questions for the participants to consider.

Most of these have never been part of the public debate and, in many cases, outsiders are never likely to know how they made their way into the IGC discussions - or how and why they vanished again.

Rome has so far presented 223 pages of reports to the negotiators, packed with questions and ideas. On top of those come the piles of paper from individual member states making their own contributions to the debate.

Issues raised by individual EU governments include calls from Ireland and Greece for the IGC to consider the problems faced by the elderly, a demand from Spain and Luxembourg for sport to be included in the next treaty, suggestions from Austria and the UK that the IGC should make a contribution to improving animal welfare, and pressure from France, Spain and Portugal for more attention to be paid to the needs of the Union's most peripheral regions.

Questions asked by IGC chairman Silvio Fagiolo include issues such as whether the definition of European citizenship should be expanded to include freedom of speech, high standards of environmental protection and the right to create pan-European parties.

Others, seemingly innocuous, could spark a storm in some member states, such as the question of whether the EU should be given the status of a “judicial person”. For most countries, this would simply mean giving the Union as a body the right to buy its own paper and pencils. But for a country such as Denmark, it is a question which would force Copenhagen to hold a referendum on the new treaty since the Danes would regard this as a transfer of national sovereignty.

Most EU governments published their own position papers on the IGC months before the negotiations began in Turin in late March - but none have given official answers to most of the questions raised by the Italians. However, some ideas have already been discarded - such as the suggestion that the new treaty should make provision for EU-wide referenda - without the public being told.