Dutch premier says EU must stick together on treaty reform

Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende has warned that dividing EU member states into opposing camps could undermine efforts to agree essential treaty reforms.

Speaking in the European Parliament yesterday (23 May), Balkenende rejected the suggestion made by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi that a two-speed Europe led by a vanguard could emerge if there was no deal on treaty reform. "We must put away this thinking about blocs. Our ambition must be to find a solution all member states can accept," he said. The prime minister of the Netherlands, whose citizens rejected the EU constitution in a referendum in June 2005, added that there was consensus that the Nice treaty needed to be changed. "Nice is not enough," he told MEPs in the first major speech setting out his vision about future treaty reform since the Dutch referendum.

The Dutch prime minister said that the concerns expressed by Dutch and French citizens who voted ‘No’ to the constitution had to be addressed. In particular, he said that calling the text a constitution had alarmed citizens who thought the Union was taking on the characteristics of a nation state. To meet these concerns, the document replacing the constitution should be a normal amending treaty, he said, which should not refer to symbols usually associated with a state like a flag and an anthem.

He also said that greater attention should be paid to the views of national parliaments, suggesting that if more than half of parliaments objected to proposed new EU laws "there must be consequences". He added that this new safeguard would not be at the expense of the European Parliament.

Balkenende said that while the EU needed to be "daring" in extending qualified majority voting to new areas of decision-making, it should only do so after careful reflection. Majority voting should only apply to areas where international co-operation is needed, like tackling climate change or fighting terrorism.

The day before (22 May) Romano Prodi told MEPs in Strasbourg that the essential elements of the constitution must not be jettisoned during the negotiations on a new treaty. "In the last two years, almost only Eurosceptic views have been listened to. It is time to listen to those who ratified the 2004 treaty," he said. Prodi said the essential elements were the creation of a post of EU foreign affairs minister, a permanent Council president, the extension of qualified majority voting, abolition of the pillar structure and giving the EU a single legal personality.

Prodi, who was president of the European Commission in 1999-2004, said that it might be necessary to have a two-speed Europe led by countries which were more ambitious about further integration. "If this compromise is not convincing we will not sign it. At this point a vanguard of countries could turn out to be the best way to proceed to a more integrated Union," added Prodi.

European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering said: "I hope we don’t end up with a two- speed Europe." Prodi replied that it was "a possibility only if we can’t reach a common solution".

• On Monday (21 May), members of the Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee overwhelmingly backed a report by Elmar Brok and Enrique Barón Crespo calling for the "key reforms" of the constitution to be preserved. The report stresses the need to retain elements such as the primacy of European law over national law, the legal personality of the EU, the merging of the pillars and the legally binding force of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It also calls for a number of additional elements to be included in the new treaty, compared to the constitution: criteria for enlargement, references to climate change, energy solidarity, migration, the fight against terrorism and the European social model. The report will be voted on at the plenary session in June.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende has warned that dividing EU member states into opposing camps could undermine efforts to agree essential treaty reforms.