Lisbon voices frustration over treaty reform talks

Date: 16/03/2000

By Gareth Harding

PORTUGUESE Foreign Minister Jaime Gama is urging EU governments to set out their stance on two key issues to be tackled at the talks on Union treaty reform, amid concern that progress could be delayed if member states refuse to reveal their hand.

The move reflects growing frustration in Lisbon at the refusal of national negotiators to set out their stance on how the number of European Commissioners should be limited in an enlarged EU and how member states' votes in the Council of Ministers should be reweighted.

Gama will call on Union foreign ministers to reveal their negotiating positions at a meeting next Monday (20 March) and hopes to use their proposals as the basis for a paper suggesting possible solutions to the problem to be presented at a meeting of national representatives on 28 March.

Both these topics were discussed at length during the last Intergovernmental Conference which produced the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997, but EU governments failed to reach an agreement which satisfied all parties.

Most diplomats believe that Union leaders will strike a deal this time round which increases the number of votes which larger member states have in the Council in return for them agreeing to give up their right to send more than one Commissioner to Brussels.

This would reassure smaller countries that their representation in the Commission was not under threat, while redressing the current imbalance in the Council by ensuring that the number of votes wielded by the EU's largest member states more accurately reflects the size of their population.

"It does not take a rocket scientist to work out that this is likely to be the trade-off, but it is unlikely to be settled until the final night of the talks," said one official.

A report drawn up by Gama to be presented to foreign ministers next week is likely to conclude that there has been little progress in the talks to date, despite some fine-tuning of the agenda and in-depth discussions on extending qualified majority voting.

After the last meeting of IGC negotiators, Portugal's Minister for Europe Francisco Seixas da Costa said "the same fault-lines that appeared with the Treaty of Amsterdam have not disappeared", adding that "the margin for trade-offs is very much reduced given the limited number of points on the table".

Da Costa regretted that some member states had ring-fenced "no-go areas" - such as extending QMV to tax and social security - where they were refusing to compromise. He also lamented the fact that there was "not a single proposal on the table" suggesting how many votes each member state should have in the Council.

Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama is urging EU governments to set out their stance on two key issues to be tackled at the talks on Union treaty reform, amid concern that progress could be delayed if Member States refuse to reveal their hand.