ANALYSIS Prospects brighten for deal on treaty reform

Date: 19/10/00

THE police used tear gas to break up Basque separatist demonstrators, the shuttle buses for journalists often failed to turn up and, worst of all for those keen to show off their beautiful beach resort, it rained and rained and rained.

From an organisational point of view, the Biarritz summit was not without its hitches for the French presidency. But its handling of the Intergovernmental Conference talks which EU leaders met to discuss last weekend has not all been plain sailing either.

Paris has been criticised by some member states for its management of the negotiations on treaty reform both in the run up to Biarritz and at the summit itself. The French stand accused of consistently putting their own interests first despite being in the presidency chair and of sabotaging negotiations in areas where they frankly do not want a deal.

Such breaches of the tradition of presidential impartiality were, say critics, exemplified at Biarritz when French President Jacques Chirac reportedly sparked a shouting match with leaders from smaller member states - led by Portugal's Antonio Guterres - after accusing them of endangering the reform process by not giving way over planned changes to the share-out of votes in the Council of Ministers. "It is a bit much when it is the presidency itself saying that if we do not find a solution to re-weighting, then they will prevent us from having a Nice agreement at all," said one EU diplomat.

However, despite the private back-biting, there are signs that subtle but significant progress was made behind closed doors at Biarritz and that, unlike the summit's weather, the prospects for a deal in December could be brightening.

The official business of the summit - the discussions on the IGC - was somewhat overshadowed by events in the Middle East and Yugoslavia. The leaders' condemnations of the violence in Israel and Vojislav Kostunica's first appearance in the Union as Yugoslavian president may have stolen the headlines, but this did not stop the summit adding political impetus to the treaty reform process.

Despite the events taking place elsewhere in the world, heads of state and government stuck to their planned IGC debates and when treaty negotiators next meet, they will feel the added pressure of having to prove that their leaders' fine talk was more than just empty words. "The more we can politicise the situation, the more results we are going to get," said one EU diplomat.

Biarritz was an informal summit and, as such, no actual decisions were made. But the injection of fresh impetus into the IGC negotiations was not the only positive outcome. A look behind the rhetoric reveals some progress on important issues. These tentative steps forward may seem small, but they potentially open the way for an end to the deadlock which has plagued the negotiations.

Member states must address four main issues if they want to prepare the Union's institutions to cope with the added strain which will be placed on them by enlargement to central and eastern Europe - the stated aim of this round of treaty talks.

Leaders need to agree new rules to govern the size of the European Commission in an enlarged Union; reweight the votes each member state has in the Council to ensure a closer correlation between population size and political muscle; increase the areas where decisions are taken by qualified majority vote rather than by unanimous agreement; and examine ways of making it easier for groups of member states to forge ahead with greater integration without the rest by using the so-called 'enhanced cooperation' mechanism.

Negotiations on the size of the Commission have been bogged down for a long time over the issue of whether each member state should have a seat on the EU executive body. But it was this question which produced the one big surprise of Biarritz.

Larger member states had until then always said they would be prepared to give up one of their two Commissioners - in exchange for concessions in other areas - in order to prevent the EU executive from becoming too bloated. But they argued that this alone would not be enough and suggested smaller member states must give up the right to have even one Commissioner all the time. This is a prospect which smaller countries have been unwilling to countenance.

The bombshell at Biarritz was the emergence of an apparent consensus among the big member states that Commission posts could be distributed on an equal rotation basis, with every country taking its turn at not having a 'representative' in Brussels.

Previously it was always assumed that large members would always have at least one Commissioner, either because this would be guaranteed in the treaties or because their political strength would always secure them a post in a 'free' competition. But last weekend, all of the 'Big Five' were willing to discuss taking turns like everyone else, awakening the previously unthinkable idea of an

EU executive which did not include at least one Frenchman, German, Italian, Spaniard and Brit.

Supporters of this approach say that if these countries are willing to contemplate a Commission without one of their countrymen, then the smaller ones begin to look a little churlish in continuing to insist that they would not. "This has hit the ball firmly into the court of the smaller member states," said one diplomat.

The argument over the size of the Commission is far from over, but it now looks increasingly possible that a ceiling on the size of the institution could be written into the Nice Treaty, even if it would only come into effect at some time in future. "If they want to be an equal rotation of Commissioners, then it would still have to have to have a date which was some way beyond enlargement, something like 2009," insisted one diplomat.

Movement on this issue could have a reverberating effect on the others, and may be enough to blast through the treaty talks logjam. Large member states have always insisted that the prize they wanted in return for giving up one of their Commissioners was a system for allocating votes in the Council of Ministers which more closely reflected member states' relative populations. Smaller countries have vigorously resisted making too much of a concession in this direction, determined to hold on to voting powers which are greater than the number of their citizens.

But the big players' suggestion that they might be willing to give up both of their Commissioners puts added pressure on the small countries to make concessions and agree a simple votes-according-to-population system in the Council.

The other significant development at Biarritz was the growing support for giving groups of member states the option of moving towards closer integration in some areas without the support of all EU countries. This progress towards making 'enhanced cooperation' easier could in turn cast a positive light on what is arguably the most important issue being tackled at the IGC - the question of which policy areas should move from unanimity to qualified majority voting (QMV).

The apparent victory for supporters of the enhanced cooperation plan, prompted in large part by the UK's increasing support for the idea, could make it easier to reach agreement on the QMV issue because it would allow member states which agree on an issue to press ahead without those who do not in some areas.

But in fields such as trade policy, where diplomats argue that switching to QMV is vital to boost the Union's ability to negotiate effectively with its trading partners, enhanced cooperation does not provide the answer and real difficulties still lie ahead.

Now that Biarritz is over, French officials are beginning work on drafting a version of the Nice Treaty based on their impressions of the discussions at the summit. With only eight weeks to go until a final deal is due to be struck, there is still an awful lot of work to do. But history may yet remember Biarritz for something far more significant than the weather.

Major feature. France has come under fire for its handling of the treaty reform talks at the recent EU summit at Biarritz. But behind closed doors, there were clear signs of progress towards a deal at the Nice summit.