Dehaene backs Prodi’s bid for ambitious treaty reform agenda

Date: 07/10/1999

By Gareth Harding

EUROPEAN Commission President Romano Prodi will receive strong support for sweeping changes to the EU treaty when the three 'wise men' appointed to advise him on institutional reform present their report later this month.

Former Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, who is chairing the high-level group, told European Voice this week that the agenda for next year's Intergovernmental Conference should be ambitious in scope and "adopt a comprehensive approach to institutional reforms" .

But he also insisted that the treaty talks must be wrapped up by the end-of-2000 deadline and should not lead to 'permanent revolution' in the EU institutions.

This will be music to the ears of Prodi, who last month told MEPs that the Union could not "afford to settle for a minimal reform that fails to equip us for powerful, efficient, decision-making" .

However, it is likely to further antagonise EU governments, most of which believe that next year's talks should only deal with the issues left over from the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations: namely, reweighting of votes in the Council of Ministers, reducing the number of Commissioners and extending the scope of majority voting.

Dehaene said that limiting next year's IGC to these three issues would be an "error" . Instead, the report he is drawing up with ex-German President Richard von Weizsäcker and former British Minister for Europe Lord Simon will set out to convince member states that a radical reform of all the EU's institutions is needed before the bloc takes in new members from central and eastern Europe.

Bringing in the 12 applicant countries without adapted structures "will end in complete immobilisation", according to Dehaene. Likewise, he argues, tinkering around the edges will result in more of the sort of problems which have plagued the Union in the past.

Hence the call for a far-reaching agenda which looks at both treaty and non-treaty changes needed to make the Union more open, efficient and democratic.

Dehaene also argues that MEPs should be closely involved in this process. "It should be common sense not to have a remake of the situation we had in Amsterdam where the two Parliament representatives were invited to the appetisers but not to the dinner," he said, referring to the decision to shut MEPs Elmar Brok and Elizabeth Guigou out of the final talks.

In line with Prodi's thinking, the wise men are likely to recommend granting further powers to the Strasbourg-based assembly in their report, which is due to be published on 18 October. Dehaene argues that qualified majority voting (QMV) should be used "as extensively as possible" in the Council of Ministers and wherever QMV is applied, parliamentarians should have equal legislative powers to EU governments. In addition, he favours granting MEPs the right to decide on all aspects of the Union budget, including agricultural spending.

One area where Dehaene's ideas are certain to face fierce resistance from governments is on the size of the Commission. He argues that in a Union of 30 member states, even if each country sent only one member to Brussels, there would be "so many Commissioners that the body would become a sort of Parliament" .

To avoid this, insists Dehaene, the size of the executive needs to be scaled down to something more resembling the governing body of the European Central Bank.

Applying the same logic, he says that "if you are convinced that the number of Commissioners is a problem for the workability of the Commission, it is evident that you have the same problems in institutions like the European Court of Justice, where each country is represented by one or two members" .

The former Belgian premier admits that his idea is likely to spark opposition from member states, but adds that the only other way to get around this problem is to give the Commission president even greater powers to choose his members and reshuffle his team.

European Commission President Romano Prodi will receive strong support for sweeping changes to the EU treaty when the three 'wise men' appointed to advise him on institutional reform present their report in October 1999.