Oreja warns of potential ‘dangers’ in IGC talks

Date: 28/11/1996

By Rory Watson

INSTITUTIONAL Affairs Commissioner Marcelino Oreja this week forcefully urged his colleagues to adopt a more aggressive approach towards the revision of the Maastricht Treaty.

In a sombre assessment of the state of play in the Intergovernmental Conference talks, Oreja warned that unless the Commission tackled a handful of key challenges, it could emerge from the lengthy negotiations considerably weakened.

He pointed in particular to the potential dangers of the institution being sidelined in new common foreign and security policy arrangements and being unable to ensure the necessary coherence in the EU's external, political, economic and diplomatic policies.

Oreja also expressed fears that, in moves to give all EU institutions a greater say on sensitive judicial issues such as asylum, the Commission would come under increasing pressure to share with governments for the first time its right to initiate Union legislation.

Senior officials fear such a development would seriously upset the careful institutional balance built up over years.

As the Irish EU presidency prepares to finalise the wording of the draft revised treaty to be presented to next month's Dublin summit, Oreja candidly admitted that institutional issues were a “black hole” which had been totally absent from the IGC talks so far.

Commission officials accept that central questions such as the extension of majority voting will not be tackled until the final stages of the IGC. But they fear that when faced with the pressure of reaching a final agreement in a few hectic weeks next June, governments may be tempted to postpone some institutional questions to the next round of enlargement negotiations.

The Commission is strongly opposed to such a strategy, repeatedly stressing the need to maintain the link between the IGC negotiations and the Union's future enlargement.

Oreja has made it clear that without an extension of majority voting, the EU would face permanent institutional stalemate if it took In more members.

Despite his pessimistic tone this week, an internal paper prepared for the full Commission highlights a number of areas where IGC negotiators are making clear progress.

It points to general agreement on taking responsibility for external frontiers, visas, asylum, immigration, anti-drug measures and customs cooperation out of intergovernmental hands and transferring it to the Union. It also notes widespread support for a specific section on employment in the new treaty and stronger references to the need for sustainable development.