Danish opt-outs loom large in IGC debate

Date: 17/10/1996

MOVES to give the EU greater powers over immigration and visa policies and to strengthen its humanitarian role are threatening two of the four 'opt-outs' which Denmark negotiated with its Union partners four years ago.

The future of the Danish reservations has not yet been raised at the Intergovernmental Conference, but their status is bound to be discussed when the outline of a draft revised treaty sees the light of day later this year.

The four concessions agreed at the 1992 Edinburgh summit were seen as essential to win grudging support from the Danish electorate in a second referendum on the Maastricht Treaty after the 'no' vote first time around.

Discussions among IGC negotiators this week confirmed that on two of the issues - citizenship and monetary union - current negotiations on EU reform will not affect the substance of the Edinburgh agreement.

But the probability that member states will agree to transfer responsibility for visa, immigration and asylum policies from the intergovernmental arena to the mainstream of Union business would change the basis of the justice and home affairs provisions on which Denmark's opt-out is based.

Similarly, if the humanitarian activities of the Petersberg Tasks are written into the defence and security elements of the Maastricht Treaty, they will alter the foundation of the agreement which rules out Danish participation in any action with defence implications.

To prevent any weakening of its reservations, the Danish government will probably have to negotiate protocols to the final treaty on both issues.

But it is unlikely to start this process until central Danish concerns on employment, the environment and transparency are safely written into the revised Maastricht text.

IGC negotiators will come up against a more immediate hurdle next week when they try to draw up a list of specific policy areas where member states are - or might be - prepared to give up national vetoes.

Attempts by the Irish presidency to prepare the ground by asking each government to indicate its views on majority voting in a detailed questionnaire have yielded little fruit. Only the UK, which opposes any extension of majority voting on principle, the Spanish and the Irish themselves have replied.

Senior officials are not surprised by the poor response. It is widely accepted that such sensitive institutional questions are unlikely to be settled until the final pieces of the IGC jigsaw fall into place.