France isolated in bid to force pace of IGC talks

Date: 01/08/1996

THE French government has so far failed to win any allies in its bid to force the pace of Union reform at the special summit meeting of European leaders in Dublin in October.

“I do not think anyone else is in the game of trying to devote the entire summit to the Intergovernmental Conference. The French are alone on this,” confirmed a senior EU official.

The original initiative for the summit came from France, with support from Germany, in an attempt to speed up the IGC negotiations.

But the idea has only been reluctantly taken up by the Irish EU presidency, which fears that holding a high-profile summit with little to show for it would unnecessarily raise and then dash the public's expectations.

“I see the summit being very general, examining a vision for Europe for the next century and perhaps getting a better understanding of some practical issues which are holding us up so that we can perhaps do more at the December summit,” explained Irish Prime Minister John Bruton.

Practical and tactical considerations lie behind the refusal of Ireland and other member states to bow to pressure from France.

There is general opposition to attempts to take responsibility for the negotiations away from the IGC group and foreign ministers, and a strong belief that France's tactics could upset the rhythm of the talks.

As Bruton confirmed on taking over the rotating presidency “timing in negotiations is as important as content”.

Some member states suspect that French President Jacques Chirac's main interest in the IGC is to strengthen the Union's common foreign and security policy (CFSP) and that as soon as this has been achieved, France's interest in other aspects of the negotiations will wane.

The Irish government is aiming to produce a balanced draft treaty for the mid-December summit. It believes that not only would it be impossible to achieve this in time for the October meeting, but also that any attempt to do so could actually complicate the negotiations.

“Union leaders will discuss the IGC in October and this discussion will help. But to try and draft an across-the-board balanced document for the beginning of October is not feasible,” insisted one EU diplomat.

The Irish tactics of focusing negotiations on specific treaty texts across a range of policy issues, rather than trying to wrap up one or two areas such as CFSP, is in line with the strategy followed by the earlier Italian presidency.

“We could have started by just choosing one or two issues, but we did not think that useful as the final compromise will only be at the very end. By looking at the whole text, we dealt with all the major issues.

“We had thought of the idea - and then rejected it - of putting a draft treaty to Florence. But there was not enough time and it would not have been endorsed,” explained Italy's IGC representative Silvio Fagiolo.

He believes that in the search for agreement on reforming the Union there has been a logical development from the general discussion of Carlos Westendorp's Reflection Group to the focus on major issues during the Italian presidency to the current examination of concrete treaty articles.

“What is important is that the Irish have kept intact all the initial ambitions of the conference. In the search for convergence, nothing of substance has been given up,” he insisted.