Portugal and Commission join forces to broaden IGC agenda

Date: 20/01/2000

By Gareth Harding

THE European Commission and the Portuguese presidency are fighting a rearguard action to broaden the agenda for the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference in the face of fierce opposition from most member states.

Portugal's Minister for Europe Francisco Seixas da Costa is currently touring Europe's capitals in a bid to drum up support for the talks, which begin next month, to go beyond the limited list of topics agreed by EU leaders at their Helsinki summit in December.

The Commission will also step up the pressure for more far-reaching treaty changes next Wednesday (26 January) when it publishes its second report on the IGC. This is likely to mirror the discussion paper presented by the institution in November, but contain more concrete proposals and draft texts in some of the areas where it believes treaty changes are needed.

Both the Commission and the Portuguese governments are playing up the chances of persuading member states to discuss a wider range of topics at the IGC. But although EU leaders left the door open in Helsinki for Lisbon to add other issues to the agenda during its term at the Union's helm, most governments have made it clear that they remain implacably opposed to the idea of a more ambitious agenda.

They are still insisting that the talks should focus on the three issues left over from the Amsterdam Treaty talks; namely, the reweighting of votes in the Council of Ministers, limiting the number of Commissioners in an enlarged Union and extending qualified majority voting.

However, Portuguese Prime Minister António Guterres believes that the IGC, which will be launched on 14 February, should not be "restricted to the dry institutional topics of reforming the various European bodies", but should include other themes such as defence and an EU bill of rights. Lisbon is also in favour of looking at the reform of other Union institutions and examining ways of enabling groups of countries to 'go it alone' on certain contentious issues.

MEPs, the Commission and several smaller countries support the presidency's approach, but they are lined up against a majority of EU governments which want to limit the agenda to the Amsterdam left-overs plus a handful of other issues.

Sources close to Commission President Romano Prodi said that in the report due to be unveiled next week, the EU executive would continue to push for a simplified way of changing the Union treaty in some areas without going through the cumbersome and time-consuming ratification procedure currently required.

But officials said that firm proposals on how the treaty could be divided into two parts would only emerge in two to three months time, after the European Institute in Florence has completed work on a study into this issue.

IGC Commissioner Michel Barnier will use the launch of the institution's paper next week to call for a wide extension of majority voting in the Council, but he is expected to stop short of urging member states to give up their veto in areas such as defence, foreign policy and taxation.

He is also likely to call on larger member states to agree to send only one Commissioner to Brussels in future, instead of two as they do now, to avoid the EU executive becoming too big in an expanded Union.

The European Commission and the Portuguese Presidency are fighting a rear-guard action to broaden the agenda for the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference in the face of fierce opposition from most Member States.