Berlin under fire over call for more EU treaty talks

Date: 29/06/2000

By Simon Taylor

EU governments are warning that German plans to hold another round of treaty reform talks in 2003-04 could jeopardise the chances of reaching agreement in the current negotiations by the end of this year.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has promised the leaders of his country's federal states, the Länder, that he will push for a new Intergovernmental Conference to be launched within three years to address their concerns that they are losing power to Union institutions.

Schröder hopes to convince fellow Union leaders to commit themselves to discussing a new set of reforms at their December summit in Nice.

The move has already won the support of French President Jacques Chirac, who said in a speech to the German parliament this week that after the Nice summit: "We should launch a process which will allow us to answer the questions that Europe is being asked." He added that this should include "clearly defining the division of competences between the different levels of Europe".

But EU diplomats fear that agreeing to hold another round of treaty reform talks in the near future would take the pressure off governments to reach the difficult decisions essential to lay the ground for enlargement of the Union by the end of this year. "If you start talking about another IGC before enlargement it increases the risk of not getting anything in December," said one diplomat.

Given that it will take EU governments up to a year to ratify the results of the current IGC, failure to clinch a deal in Nice would break a long-standing pledge to the applicant countries that the Union will be ready to take in new members from 2002.

Diplomats say the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations in 1997 underlined the dangers of agreeing to hold another round of internal reform talks in the near future before settling the issues already on the table.

In that case, the prospect of a second set of negotiations before enlargement encouraged some governments to resist intense pressure to make painful sacrifices - and diplomats fear that history could repeat itself.

They acknowledge that the German Länder's stance will make it difficult for Berlin to strike a deal at the end of this IGC without a promise of yet more reforms. Under Germany's post-war constitution, the federal states have the power to block constitutional changes and the leader of the Christian Democrat opposition Angela Merkel has already threatened to oppose ratification of the Nice treaty unless it addresses the Länder's concerns.

However, many EU diplomats argue that Schröder should find another way of dealing with the federal states instead of holding the current IGC hostage.

European Commission officials have suggested that the problem could be addressed through President Romano Prodi's 'governance' initiative, which aims to identify which responsibilities could be handed back to national and regional authorities. "It is not very clever of the Germans not to try to solve this through Prodi's ideas on European governance," said one.

Spanish diplomats argue that Schröder should tackle the problem through the German parliament and not muddy the waters in the current IGC debate. "Spain has a similar problem with its regions but it should be solved at the level of national parliaments. Otherwise it will make life difficult at European level," said one.

In his speech in Germany, Chirac also called for the creation of a "pioneer group"

of EU member states which could push ahead with closer co-operation in policy areas including economic policy, defence and the fight against crime.

The French president said the current rules determining when a group of member states could press ahead on their own should be eased and a special secretariat created to ensure that any new initiatives did not clash with existing Union law.

EU governments are warning that German plans to hold another round of treaty reform talks in 2003-4 could jeopardise the chances of reaching agreement in the current negotiations by the end of 2000.