Flexibility is priority on IGC agenda

Date: 26/09/1996

By Rory Watson

FRANCE and Germany will next week examine ways of preventing individual EU members from blocking joint policy initiatives by their Union partners.

The bilateral meeting between the two countries' foreign ministers is their first since the UK tried to bring Union decision-making to a halt by pursuing its controversial policy of non-cooperation.

That tense episode convinced many EU governments that more flexibility should be introduced into the Union to allow members determined to integrate further and faster in certain areas to do so.

They argue that what is necessary in a Union of 15 will be even more so once the alliance expands eastwards and southwards.

“Flexibility could be one of the most important things to emerge from the Intergovernmental Conference on the Maastricht Treaty,” confirmed one of the negotiators heavily involved in the IGC process this week.

The Franco-German talks in Paris on 2 October will take place just two days after the IGC group considers the flexibility concept in detail for the first time.

Paradoxically, the idea appeals both to the hard core of countries which would like to dig even deeper foundations for the Union and to those such as the UK which are decidedly more hesitant.

But diplomats also point to potential dangers. “It seems that structured and organised flexibility is something whose time has come. But we need to be very careful and have clear rules because if we get it wrong, what we have achieved could unravel,” warned one senior official.

Both Paris and Bonn have ruled out any public initiative emerging from Wednesday's meeting between Hervé de Charette and Klaus Kinkel, confirming that their bilateral strategy for the Union will only appear later in the year. The event will, however, give both governments a final opportunity to compare notes on EU reform before the special European summit in Dublin on 5 October.

While the flexibility concept is gaining support, Denmark is still coming to terms with the unexpected consequences of the various EU policy opt-outs it negotiated four years ago.

It will tell its partners next week that because of its exemption from joint action programmes under the Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy, it will not be able to participate in EU moves to clear anti-personnel mines in Bosnia - even though the project has widespread public support in Denmark.