Landaburu: Irish ‘no’ will probably delay enlargement

Date: 12/09/02

A SECOND rejection of the Nice treaty by Irish voters will 'probably' scupper plans to finalise talks on the first wave of EU enlargement by the end of this year, a top European Commission official has admitted.

Eneko Landaburu, head of the enlargement directorate-general, said the possibility of an Irish 'no' in the October poll was his 'main concern' at the moment. 'This could have consequences to delay the global [enlargement] process,' Landaburu said yesterday (11 September).

'It will probably not permit the conclusion of the exercise in Copenhagen [December's EU summit]. This vote would promote a shock in the Union and when you receive a shock nobody knows how members will react.'

The most likely effect of the referendum's failure, he believes, would be that the question of how the EU's institutions, especially the Council of Ministers, should function in the long term will have to be reopened.

All-night talks at the 2000 Nice summit ended with a compromise deal on reweighting votes in the Council. Under its terms, the EU's largest country, Germany, would be able block Council decisions by teaming up with other states representing 38 of the Union's population.

Revising that agreement would 'require some time', said Landaburu. 'It will be very difficult to have a proposal too close to what Nice said. The determination of threshholds for quality majority voting is not an easy question. It is a question about the power and influence of member states.'

He also predicted that an Irish 'no' 'will provoke a lot of people into saying we are going too fast [with enlargement], that our public opinions are not supporting us in this global process.'

• Full interview next week

A second rejection of the Treaty of Nice by Irish voters will 'probably' scupper plans to finalise talks on the first wave of EU enlargement by the end of 2002, a top European Commission official has admitted.