France risks plunging treaty talks into crisis

Date: 21/09/00

By Simon Taylor

FRANCE has come under fierce attack from smaller member states over its handling of the ongoing treaty reform negotiations.

They have accused Paris of failing to take their interests into account and jeopardising the chances of a deal by the end of this year.

Diplomats claim France is using its presidency of the Union to champion the cause of the big member states instead of playing a neutral role in the talks. They are warning that Paris will have to change its attitude fast to avoid a showdown at next month's EU summit, which will take stock of progress in the Intergovernmental Conference negotiations. "If they want to provoke a mini-crisis for Biarritz, they are going the right way about it," said one.

Tensions between the French presidency and the ten smaller member states came to a head at a meeting of EU foreign ministers this week which discussed the size of the European Commission after enlargement.French European Affairs Minister Pierre Moscovici came under fire for trying to deal with this issue in isolation from other key reform questions such as the number of votes wielded by each country in the Council of Ministers and proposals to extend the use of qualified majority voting to more policy areas.

"Some member states are getting fed up with the presidency because they are being asked to compromise on everything while the big member states are not being asked to compromise on anything," said one Commission observer. France has also sparked anger by claiming that smaller member states are trying to weaken the Commission by opposing plans to give it a more hierarchical structure.

If, as expected, each country has only one Commissioner in an enlarged EU, France and other large member states want the number of vice-presidents to be increased from two to as many as six and for them to be given more responsibility for policy co-ordination.

The smaller member states see Paris' proposal as an attempt by the bloc's biggest members to ensure they continue to wield more power than their smaller neighbours. Although the new treaty would not necessarily stipulate that the extra vice-president posts should go to large countries, they would be able to exert strong political pressure on future Commission presidents to give their candidates the top jobs.

But French officials argue that a more hierarchical structure is essential to ensure a strong and efficient Commission in an expanded Union. "The Commission will always be the cornerstone of European construction but these people would weaken its role," said one. "It is quite amazing that it is the most communitaire member states who are saying this."

The smaller member states vehemently deny trying to undermine the EU executive, insisting that they have long been the greatest advocates of a strong Commission to defend their interests against the might of the largest countries. They argue that the new treaty should not specify the number or responsibilities of additional vice-presidents, with such decisions remaining in the Commission president's hands.

Diplomats claim France's tactics at this week's meeting ruined the chances of winning support for a proposal which would have been in the interests of smaller countries. Paris suggested that there should be no more than 20 Commissioners, even if the Union admits more than five new members, and said posts should be rotated between countries so that even the bigger countries would not always have a Commissioner.

Insiders say French diplomats must have known that Germany and Spain would reject this plan and believe that Paris' strategy was designed to put pressure on smaller states to accept a more hierarchical Commission.

France has come under fierce attack from smaller member states over its handling of the ongoing treaty reform negotiations. They have accused France, which currently holds the presidency of the Union, of failing to take their interests into account and jeopardising the chances of a deal by the end of 2000.