IGC battle looms over size of Commission

Date: 30/03/2000

By Gareth Harding

SOME EU countries would have to give up the right to send a European Commissioner to Brussels under proposals put forward by the Union's five largest member states.

Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Spain all came out in favour of capping the number of Commissioners at the present level of 19, plus the president, at a meeting of Intergovernmental Conference negotiators earlier this week.

If agreed, this would mean that some countries would no longer be entitled to a 'representative' in the EU executive if the Union expands to take in the dozenwould-be members waiting to join the bloc.

Under the current rules, the EU's five biggest member states have two Commissioners each and the rest have one. Smaller countries are fighting to retain this right, but their larger neighbours argue that an executive body with almost 30 members would be unwieldy. "There are already too many Commissioners," said one official, adding: "You just cannot go on inventing positions for them."

Diplomats from larger member states insist it would be "unthinkable" for them to sacrifice both their Commissioners and have mooted the idea of rotating members from smaller countries to keep numbers down. They have also made it clear that they will only give up their second Commissioner if votes in the Council of Ministers are reweighted to reflect population size more closely.

France, Italy, Spain, the UK, Finland, Ireland and Sweden favour a reweighting of votes, while Germany, Belgium, Greece, Denmark and Luxembourg would prefer to move to a 'dual-majority' system under which legislation would only be passed if it secured a majority of votes and a majority of member states' populations.

The European Parliament is expected to add its weight to calls for Council decisions to be taken by double majority next month. It has also suggested a two-stage solution to limiting the size of the Commission.

A report by Greek Christian Democrat Giorgios Dimitrakopoulos and German Socialist Jo Leinen adopted by the constitutional affairs committee last week argues that the executive should be composed of one Commissioner per member state between 2005-10, but capped at present numbers from 2010 onwards.

It also calls for MEPs to have co-decision powers with the Council over all legislation decided by qualified majority vote (QMV), for the Commission president to be elected by MEPs from a list put forward by EU governments and for Commissioners to resign if asked to do so by the Parliament.

IGC negotiators will next week turn their attention back to the extension of QMV, which is seen as the thorniest issue on the conference agenda. Hopes of a breakthrough on the Commission's proposals to extend QMV to taxation issues received a boost at the last meeting of negotiators when Germany said it was willing to see majority voting used for all taxation issues related to the single market. A slim majority of member states now supports this idea, although the UK and Spain remain implacably opposed.

Some EU countries would have to give up the right to send a European Commissioner to Brussels under proposals put forward by the Union's five largest Member States. Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Spain all came out in favour of capping the number of Commissioners at the present level of 19 plus the president, at a recent meeting of Intergovernmental Conference negotiators.