Big issues left for leaders at June summit

Date: 29/05/1997

By Rory Watson

DEEP divisions between member states over plans to reweight national votes in the Council of Ministers are expected to thwart the Dutch government's plans to table a complete draft treaty for the Union next week.

As EU governments prepare for a final hectic fortnight of negotiations on the contents of the new Treaty of Amsterdam, Dutch Minister of European Affairs Michiel Patijn admitted yesterday (28 May) that many questions remained unanswered.

“We will prepare a new text at the end of this week or early next for the negotiations. But how we will present it, whether we will publicise it or whether everything will be in it has not yet been decided,” he said.

While legal language has been agreed for many of the changes and additions which will be made to the existing treaties, a consensus on ways to overhaul the Union's decision-making mechanism continues to elude EU governments.

Despite warnings at last week's special mini-summit in Noordwijk that a decision to leave institutional issues until the Amsterdam meeting opens on 16 June ran the risk of exposing a squabbling and divided Union to the outside world, the chances of agreement beforehand are decidedly remote.

The stakes have been raised by Franco-German suggestions that the votes of the big four members, who are insisting that their demographic superiority be more clearly reflected in the Council of Ministers, should be raised from the existing ten to 25. Smaller countries would also receive an increase, but of nowhere near the same magnitude.

Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, who formally denied last week that any such proposal had been tabled, will try to construct a formula acceptable to big and small members alike as he conducts his tour of EU capitals in the coming week.

He will take the opportunity to advise French President Jacques Chirac against any attempt to postpone the Amsterdam summit in the event of a change of government after Sunday's general election in France - an idea already floated by French Socialist MEP Elisabeth Guigou.

“I would consider that a highly unfortunate start for a new French government. There is a very heavy agenda for the second half of the year and a delay would push a number of issues further into the future. I would leave it to Madame Guigou to explain that to Warsaw,” said Patijn.

Parallel efforts to find ways out of the Intergovernmental Conference maze will also be made by Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg next Monday (2 June) and by European Socialists - including a bevy of EU prime ministers - at a conference in Malmoe next week.

Even where a large measure of agreement exists, such as on the insertion of a special employment section into the revised treaty, a small number of key differences remain.

“People are talking of incentive measures to promote employment, but there is also a general insistence that these should not cost any money, should not give the Union new competences and should not affect plans for a single currency. The two must still be reconciled,” said one negotiator.