Bid to break trade powers deadlock

Date: 10/10/1996

By Rory Watson

SUPPORTERS of plans to increase the Union's responsibility for international trade policy will cross swords again next week, with opponents determined to resist any further increase in the EU's commercial powers.

The rough treatment which many members of the Intergovernmental Conference negotiating group meted out in July to suggestions that the Union should have exclusive powers in various areas of external economic relations led to unusually bitter criticism at the time from the European Commission.

Former Irish diplomat Noel Dorr, current chairman of the IGC talks, confirmed this week that the coherence of the EU's external trade policy was such a crucial issue that negotiators would return to the subject when they next meet on 15 and 16 October. “There was a certain disappointment from the Commission at the reaction round the table, and I do not think we can leave it at that,” he said.

The meeting will provide the first serious litmus test of the impact of last weekend's Dublin summit on the IGC talks, after EU leaders overwhelmingly insisted that the Union should not dilute its original ambitions for reform or abandon its goal of getting agreement on a revised EU treaty by the end of June 1997.

Pressure for the Union to have wider competence over international trade has been growing in certain quarters since the European Court of Justice stated in 1994 that its exclusive powers did not apply to the totality of external economic relations.

In particular, the judges ruled that the Union did not have sole responsibility for the inter-national aspects of services and industrial and intellectual property.

Paradoxically, most of these issues are now the subject of global negotiations in different international economic arenas, most notably in the World Trade Organisation - a development which some believe weakens the Union's bargaining clout unless it can speak to its partners with one voice.

The issue is almost certain to be discussed by EU foreign ministers when they meet at the end of the month to review IGC progress and to try to narrow differences over the future handling of Union foreign policy.

“We aim to identify particular policy issues and choices for foreign ministers and we will put to them specific questions about the Union's external activities,” confirmed Dorr.

With less than two months to go before the Irish presidency has to submit a draft outline of a revised Maastricht Treaty to EU leaders at their mid-December Dublin summit, IGC negotiators believe they are making progress on the security aspects of the new text.

“I feel we are more or less agreed on the principle of including the Petersberg Tasks in the treaty. The question is what language do we use and where do we put it? The whole area of security and defence is more complex than other areas as other organisations like NATO and the Western European Union (WEU) are involved. We must make sure the wording is right,” said Dorr.

Under the formula now on the table, the sensitivities of

EU countries which are not members of the WEU defence alliance are catered for by avoiding any specific reference to the Petersberg Tasks.

Instead, the draft treaty specifies that the security of the EU “shall include humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks and tasks of crisis management involving the use of military means”.