Concentrating minds

Date: 27/03/1997

IT is undoubtedly true that there is nothing like a deadline to concentrate minds. The only trouble is that once you have a deadline, it inevitably prompts endless fevered speculation about whether it will be met.

The Union currently faces two such deadlines - one self-imposed and the other laid down by treaty texts - as governments prepare to get down to brass tacks at the Intergovernmental Conference on EU reform in the hope of bringing the negotiations to a successful conclusion at the Amsterdam summit in June and simultaneously make a final push to be among the first wave of countries to qualify for economic and monetary union on 1 January 1999.

In both cases, those charged with seeing the project through insist that their deadline will be met. They have no option.

While politicians from individual member states who have something to gain from delay - or the mere suggestion of a delay - may profitably indulge in such speculation, those tasked with ensuring the EU as a whole meets the target dates know they cannot afford to do so.

For if they were to suggest, even for a moment, that they doubted their own words, it would almost certainly become a self-fulfilling prophesy: with no deadline to meet, the impetus behind the concentrated effort needed if member states are to have any hope of qualifying for EMU in time would disappear overnight and, with no target to aim at, the talks on EU reform could drag on for years.

It is wrong to assume that just because big differences remain over many of the key questions facing the IGC, there is little chance of getting agreement on a new Union treaty less than three months from now.

In all EU negotiations, trade-offs and deals on the most difficult of issues are only ever made at the last possible moment, as each member state seeks to win concessions in one area by giving ground in another.

There is no reason yet, therefore, to suppose that the Dutch presidency's optimism about sealing agreement on a new EU treaty by mid-June is ill-founded.

But that does not mean that Union governments do not have some tough questions to answer between now and then. And although a final deal will not be struck until the last moment, those issues cannot be ducked for much longer.

The speculation over EMU will continue, however, whatever politicians say, because with only nine months to go, meeting the budgetary targets is now in the lap of the economic gods.