Denmark’s challenge is cut short

Date: 22/05/1997

By Ole Ryborg

THE first act of the show will be over almost before it starts when the Copenhagen government and a group of ten Eurosceptics meet in a Danish courtroom next week to settle a dispute over the legality of the country's ratification of the Maastricht Treaty.

Fears that this extremely complex court case would drag on for years and thereby delay Denmark's ratification of the revised EU treaty to be agreed at next month's Amsterdam summit have been largely swept away by a defeat for the Eurosceptics' appeal to be allowed to summon key witnesses to give evidence.

The court has ruled that leading figures such as former Foreign Minister Uffe Elleman-Jensen, present Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen and former Council of Ministers' Secretary-General Niels Ersbøll cannot be questioned and has set aside less than two weeks to hear the case.

Nobody will pay much attention to this first courtroom tussle as the outcome is certain to prompt an appeal to the high court because of the principles at stake.

The case centres on whether the Copenhagen government was in breach of the Danish constitution, which declares that the state can hand over sovereignty to international authorities “only to a more specified extent”, when it ratified the Maastricht Treaty.

The plaintiffs claim that ratification of the treaty included a transfer of sovereignty that was not specified, a charge rejected by the government.

At the heart of the matter is the catch-all clause - Article 235 - of the Treaty of Rome, which has been used more than 500 times since Denmark joined the European Economic Community in 1973. It allows for the EU to take action in areas not specifically covered elsewhere in Union law, providing it conforms with the goals set out by the treaty.

The plaintiffs' problem is that the complaint centres on their country's ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Article 235 was not changed by that treaty.

The court is expected to deliver a ruling fairly quickly after the ten days of hearings. But there is still no date for the real battle which will take place in the supreme high court later.