Last-minute

Date: 22/05/1997

By Rory Watson

EUROPEAN Commission President Jacques Santer has made a personal, 11th-hour plea to Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok in a bid to strengthen the Union's capacity to fight inequality and promote EU-wide social programmes.

As the Intergovernmental Conference negotiations on the reform of the Union's treaties draw to a close, fears are growing that EU leaders will concentrate on key institutional reforms and the Union's future defence policy at the expense of social issues of direct interest to the majority of citizens.

“The whole question of social policy was not even discussed before the UK general election on 1 May and even now it seems to be getting only cursory attention. We must not lose this opportunity to put it on a stronger legal footing, particularly in the current climate,” said one senior official involved in the IGC talks.

Santer's two-page letter to Kok is certain to strike a chord with the Dutch Socialist premier.

He is likely to give the Commission president's call for a stronger social dimension to the Union a more sympathetic and urgent hearing than his centre-right European Affairs Minister Michiel Patijn, who has chaired most of the IGC talks until now.

Whether other EU leaders share Santer's view may become clearer after their mini-summit meeting in the Dutch seaside resort of Noordwijk tomorrow (23 May).

The Commission president believes that Union governments should consider strengthening the Social Protocol, which was watered down during the Maastricht negotiations in a vain attempt to bring the UK on board, rather than simply incorporating it into the treaty unamended.

He has raised the possibility of majority voting in new areas, such as employee representation and rules on redundancy, and is suggesting that the treaty provision on equal pay for equal work should be broadened into a general legal commitment to equal opportunities. Similarly, he says the pledge to integrate people excluded from the labour market should be extended to tackling social exclusion in general.

Santer is anxious to end the uncertainty surrounding a host of individual EU programmes aimed at alleviating poverty, helping elderly and handicapped people, and even encouraging the creation of a European voluntary service.

With several member states, notably the UK and Germany, mounting a legal challenge to the Union's right to spend EU funds in such areas, Santer wants the revised treaty to confirm explicitly that such measures are permissible provided they satisfy strict criteria.

His initiative has added an extra burden to an already heavily charged IGC agenda. Kok is hoping that the Noordwijk meeting will clear away more of the dozen or so obstacles still standing in the way of a new treaty emerging in mid-June.

By searching for agreement on the Union's foreign policy, its handling of judicial and home affairs cooperation and the introduction of the new concept of flexible integration, he is hoping to leave politically charged institutional issues to be settled at the Amsterdam summit in three weeks' time.

The late arrival of social issues on the IGC table has been made possible by the change of government in the UK and the general ideological support which the new Labour administration gives to EU involvement in social policy.

But other governments are still trying to determine how far that enthusiasm goes.

“One thing is clear,” said European Parliament President José María Gil-Robles yesterday (21 May). “The UK wants to include the Social Protocol without any great changes into the treaty. But other issues are still shrouded in mist. One of the contributions which the Noordwijk meeting could make would be to dispel some of the fog surrounding the UK's position.”