Constitution crisis high on EU agenda

Date: 16/10/03

With the intergovernmental conference going virtually nowhere, EU leaders have plenty to do over the next two days, reports Dana Spinant

EU LEADERS are on a collision course as they arrive in Brussels today (16 October) for a critical European Council summit, which will concentrate on four major topics: the European constitution, reconstruction of Iraq, Europe's ailing economy, and, the thorny question of asylum laws.

The biggest headache facing the summiteers in the next two days is how to unblock negotiations on a final version of the constitution. Lack of any real progress by the intergovernmental conference (IGC), which is discussing a draft constitution presented by the Convention on the EU's future in June, has been dubbed "alarming" by member states' ministers and MEPs.

"It is frustrating that there is no discussion, no dialogue in the IGC. It is a series of monologues as each member state presents yet again its inflexible position, and that's all," one member of the IGC told European Voice.

An attempt to discuss two key issues - the future composition of the European Commission and the role of the proposed EU foreign minister - saw foreign ministers of the 25 present and future member states, as well as candidates Bulgaria and Romania, deadlocked at their meeting in Luxembourg earlier this week.

One MEP described the situation as "a dialogue of the deaf".

"There is no debate, nothing is moving," said Iñigo Méndez de Vigo, one of two representatives of the European Parliament on the IGC.

De Vigo's colleague, Klaus Hänsch, expressed dismay at "the level of the debate" and warned against unpicking the draft produced by the Convention, chaired by France's former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

EU leaders will struggle over a debate on the composition of the Commission, as 15 countries oppose the Convention's proposal, namely that the EU executive be composed of 15 voting commissioners (including the president and foreign minister), plus other commissioners without voting rights.

But 15 mainly small and medium-sized countries insist that every member state should have a commissioner with full voting rights.

Mircea Geoanã, the Romanian foreign minister, predicts the Convention proposal will not make the final cut.

"I have the impression that the idea of two categories of commissioners will be rejected," he said, after talks on the issue at Luxembourg. "There was a general feeling that this idea was counterproductive," he added.

Méndez de Vigo confirmed that "most of them [member states] were against this. They insisted on one commissioner per member state. Full stop".

However, Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, warned that if each country were to have a commissioner, then the large countries should have two.

A Swedish diplomat described this proposal as rather "eccentric", but a French official said it "had some logic".

"What he [Fischer] means is that if we deny what we decided at the Nice summit, to reduce the Commission [to less than one commissioner per member state], once the 27th state joins the Union in 2007, then the large states will also step back on their pledge to give up the second commissioner they have now," he said.

This proposal would produce a jumbo-sized Commission of 31 members, which many say would not be able to perform its tasks efficiently.

Diplomats in Luxembourg hinted that Fischer's proposal is "a bluff" to dissuade small member states' calls for a big Commission.

"Germany, as well as France, wants a small Commission of 15: this is their official position," a Belgian official said.

But the IGC's host, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, has taken Fischer's idea on board. "If we have a large Commission, then the large member states should have two commissioners," he declared on Tuesday.

Lydie Polfer, the Luxembourg foreign minister, has presented a compromise proposal, under which the Commission would be neither "small" as the Convention proposes nor "large" as the small states want, but "medium".

Under the plan, the EU of 27 member states would have 18 commissioners - giving two-thirds of member states a representative in the College.

"This looks like an ingenious proposal," Mircea Geoanã said. "Instead of being out of the Commission every other term, each member state would only be out every third term."

This idea, which has already been discussed by the Convention's inner circle, the praesidium, at the behest of Institutional Affairs Commissioner Michel Barnier, could muster support, according to an IGC insider.

"It would be a typical EU compromise, neither black nor white, neither small nor big: it should work," one Spanish official said.

However, officials warn that if this part of the Convention's draft is changed, it would trigger other alterations on the powers of the institutions, currently regarded as "a package".

"There is no automatic link between the composition of the European Commission and the system of voting in the Council," Méndez de Vigo said. "But all are however to be agreed together."

Jean-Luc Dehaene, one of the two Convention vice-presidents, has warned that changing the provisions on the composition of the Commission would amount to "playing with fire". The entire institutional package would be brought into question, he said, if the proposal on the Commission were altered.

Another "disappointment" of the IGC, according to Klaus Hänsch, has been the discussion on the proposed EU foreign minister. The main bone of contention is the name to be given to this post. Insiders say the UK, Sweden and the three Baltic states are against calling the holder of the post "foreign minister", as they think this name should be reserved for national foreign ministers.

"There was something archaic in the naïvety of concentrating the debate on the name of the foreign minister, as some member states believe a foreign minister can only act in the name of a member state," Hänsch said.

"That's the level of the debate in the IGC. I find it rather strange," he added.

Hänsch also attacked the amount of small print in the constitution's text.

"We had a coherent draft constitution, and we now face the risk of overburdening it with too many details."

A Commission official echoed this concern. "I see the risk of introducing matters into the text which are not of a constitutional nature," he said.

In addition to the two thorniest issues already tackled by the IGC, EU leaders are set to discuss other potential sticking points. One such is the stubborn opposition from Spain and Poland to replacing the qualified majority voting system for the Council, adopted at the 2000 Nice summit, with the "double majority" system proposed by the Convention.

Under this, decisions would require the support of a majority of states (ie at least 13) who must also represent at least 60% of the Union's population.

Preview of the European Council held in Brussels, 16-17 October 2003.