ANALYSIS Heavyweights set for a round of sparring ahead of big IGC fight

Date: 05/10/00

The result of the Danish referendum on the euro will be ringing in the ears of EU leaders at next week's informal summit in Biarritz. Simon Taylor and John Shelley report

WITH the Nice summit in December shaping up to be the equivalent of a boxing match which goes the full 15 rounds, Biarritz promises to be EU leaders' first training fight. The rhetoric might be bruising, but no one is really going to get hurt.

While few expect next week's informal summit to produce anything more than the vaguest outlines of an eventual deal on the new Nice Treaty, it will give heads of state and government their first chance to get to grips with the issues which will deprive them of one - or possibly two - nights' sleep in December. "If the French are clever, they will use Biarritz to alert heads of state and government so they know their stuff for Nice," said one diplomat.

Paris is keen to ensure that Union leaders have the frankest debate possible in Biarritz so that they can get a feel for what their counterparts' bottom line will be two months later. That is why it has decided to hold the discussions in the most restricted format possible, with summiteers only allowed one senior civil servant each in attendance as note-taker.

There can be little doubt that the results of the Danish vote on euro-zone membership will be ringing in their ears as they sit down in Biarritz.

Some pro-integration member states such as France, Germany and Italy may claim that Danish voters' truculence strengthens the case for reinforced co-operation to allow groups of member states to press ahead in some policy areas without being held back by a reluctant few.

But others will argue that if EU leaders should draw one lesson from last week's vote in Denmark, it is about the risk of pursuing grandiose political projects without firm support from the public. After all, many heads of state and government will breathe a sigh of relief that they do not face Denmark's constitutional straitjacket, which forces the country to hold a referendum every time it transfers powers to the Union .

Even without the 'no' from Copenhagen, it remains hard to see where the enhanced cooperation 'mechanism' can bring any added value. Analysts say the Danish result has underlined that the EU in its current manifestation is a hybrid organisation where different member states only co-operate in the projects which they can afford to support politically. The Danish vote will, however, have a clear impact on governments in one important way - it will heighten sensitivity among EU leaders' about doing deals which could be difficult to sell to voters back home.

Heads of state and government will be watching their counterparts carefully to try to work out ways of minimising the political damage from the inevitable concessions which every country will have to make in Nice to secure a deal.

Attempts to broker an accord will not be made any easier by the fact that the only available prize is a treaty which will prepare the Union for the forthcoming wave of enlargement.

To ensure that its decision-making structures do not seize up altogether when the EU expands to take in up to a dozen more countries, existing member states will have to share some of their current rights with the new entrants.

It is therefore hardly surprising that despite the long hours of meetings to prepare the groundwork for a deal under the Finns, Portuguese and now the French, the Union is still deadlocked, with the large member states lined up against their smaller counterparts like Russell Crowe's Roman legions facing the German tribes in Gladiator.

Paris has attempted to convince the smaller countries that allowing each member state to keep a Commissioner would turn the institution's weekly meeting in the Breydel into a modern-day version of the League of Nations, with as much chance of running the Union's business successfully as the league had of preventing the Second World War. But the smaller countries have grown increasingly infuriated at being lectured about the importance of a strong Commission by France, a country which put the political pride of ex-prime minister Edith Cresson above the survival of former President Jacques Santer's administration.

However, despite the ever more resentful exchanges between France and the EU's smaller member states, it is clear that the arguments over the future size of the Commission will only be settled at the last minute in Nice and will form part of a package with the reweighting of votes in the Council of Ministers.

The battle lines are drawn differently on this issue - not least because the small member states agreed in principle to give up some of their votes during the negotiations on the Amsterdam Treaty. Instead, attention will focus on whether France is prepared to let Germany have more votes than other large member states in proportion to its bigger population.

While the deadlock over redistributing posts and power within the Union continues, negotiators are much more positive about the progress being made in identifying new areas of EU decision-making where governments can be persuaded to give up the right to veto proposals single-handedly.

Officials believe many of the obstacles to extending qualified majority voting (QMV) to around 40 new areas of legislation are in the process of being removed. While in almost every field there are some member states which object to relinquishing their veto, officials believe that many of these reservations can be overcome in the wee small hours of the morning in Nice.

There are, however, five areas where it is hard to see how a deal can be reached on moving to QMV: taxation, social security rules, justice and home affairs, anti-discrimination measures and trade policy.

The one concrete thing which EU leaders are likely to agree in Biarritz is the much-heralded and long-awaited Charter of Fundamental Rights. Billed as a great gift from the Union to its citizens, the charter was intended to lay out in one accessible document the basic rights which all Europeans share and which must be protected no matter how far the Union expands its powers or its borders.

This may sound a simple idea, but the inevitable arguments over precisely which rights are 'fundamental' and which are not has meant the 62-strong convention charged with drafting the text has needed every minute of the nine months it was allotted for the task. It has, nonetheless, now come up with a paper which is both a great deal more far-reaching than many predicted at the outset and one which member states appear able to accept.

The charter contains 54 articles laid out in seven chapters on subjects ranging from the truly fundamental - such as the right to life - to the much more contentious - for example, an employee's right to be consulted on the way his or her workplace is run. It contains civil rules such as the right to stand and vote in elections, and sections addressing concerns such as a ban on cloning human beings and rules on data and environmental protection.

However, the price of having a wide-ranging charter - and one which contains social aspirations including an entitlement to health care instead of confining itself to basic rights - is that although leaders will endorse its content, they will not agree to make its provisions enforceable by law.

The draft charter will be put on the agenda for Nice, to be formally adopted as a declarative statement, but France has abandoned its efforts to persuade fellow governments to incorporate the text into the treaty which emerges from Nice.

Many countries are still insisting that the charter must be made legally binding at a later date, but critics say the failure to act now - while the project has the necessary momentum behind it - is a crushing blow to those who dreamed of enabling EU citizens to use the law to stand up for their rights.

Leaders will make much play of the symbolic significance of reaching agreement on the charter at Biarritz, but the public - who, after all, are the people the project is supposed to inspire - may not be quite so impressed.

Major feature. The result of the Danish referendum on the euro will be ringing in the ears of EU leaders at their forthcoming informal summit in Biarritz.