Euro-centre awaits UK election result

Date: 20/03/1997

By Simon Coss

EU FOREIGN ministers have abandoned an attempt to break the deadlock over proposals for a European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia when they meet next week, as the UK continues to dig in its heels over the issue.

Most observers now believe that a change of government in London offers the best hope of saving the European Commission's plan.

The current British government objects to the proposal on legal grounds. While London insists it is not opposed to the idea of creating a pan-European monitoring body, it maintains that there is no need for the centre to be set up as an EU-level organisation.

Its says that as racism and xenophobia are issues which clearly fall under the justice and home affairs pillar of the Maastricht Treaty, the proposal should be dealt with through intergovernmental cooperation.

But the British Labour Party - which is widely tipped to win the forthcoming UK election now set for 1 May - has made it clear it would have no such objections to the Commission's plan.

Indeed, when Labour's 'shadow' Foreign Minister Robin Cook was in Brussels earlier this month, he specifically mentioned inserting a clause on racism and xenophobia into the revised EU treaty currently under negotiation at the Intergovernmental Conference.

“It is my understanding that a Labour government would not query the legal base of these proposals,” said a party spokesman.

The intransigence of British Prime Minister John Major's government has led to the subject being dropped from the agenda of next Monday's (24 March) meeting of EU foreign ministers, although it will be discussed in a Council working group on the same day.

The issue is now unlikely to be tackled at a ministerial level until the Justice and Home Affairs Council meets on 27 May, nearly four weeks after the UK election.

Officially, the Commission will only say that it feels it would be a great shame if the centre was not given the green light before the end of the Netherlands' EU presidency on 30 June.

The project is seen as the centre piece of the current European Year Against Racism and Xenophobia, launched with much fanfare in The Hague earlier this year.

Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn decided to base his original proposal for the centre on Article 235 of the Treaty of Rome, a sort of 'catch-all' clause which allows the EU to take action in areas not specifically covered by the treaty.

But the UK maintains that the European Court of Justice has effectively ruled that Article 235 cannot be used to extend Community competences.

The Commission contests this interpretation and denies the Court has ever made such a ruling. Officials concede that there has been an interim decision which prohibits spending on social exclusion, but say this ruling has no bearing on the racism and xenophobia question.

Other member states favour the Commission's proposal as they fear taking an intergovernmental approach to the issue would prove an unnecessarily slow and unwieldy process, delaying the creation of the centre.

But with the British election campaign now in full swing, the current Conservative government would risk the ire of its Eurosceptical back-benchers if it gave way before polling day - and internal party battles over Europe are something it is desperate to avoid at all costs as it seeks to present a united front to the electorate.

In view of this, the most logical approach for the Commission and the other member states to adopt seems

to be to simply wait and see whether a new government is elected in the UK.