Stage is set for the birth of a challenging new era

Date: 21/03/1996

IT has been a classic pregnancy. Nine months after the hot Mediterranean sun bathed Messina in its glow, the Intergovernmental Conference will see the light of day in Turin next week.

The future offspring is already being showered with advice on how to behave. But even the most diligent observer has no firm idea which of the many conflicting words of wisdom will be heeded, nor how ambitious the new arrival will be.

The UK government, which is generally considered to be at one end of the broad spectrum of opinion on how the IGC should operate, prefers to use motoring analogies.

It likens the task of reshaping the Maastricht Treaty to the minor running-in service and readjustments that a car requires after completing its first 5,000 kilometres.

That minimalist view, dictated largely but not entirely by the British Conservative Party's divisions over Europe, is definitely held by a minority, although it wins sporadic support on specific issues.

At the other end of the spectrum lies a firm body of opinion arguing that enlargement of the Union, with the prospect of up to 12 new members, demands more imagination and a greater commitment to reform. This group coalesces around Germany, the Benelux countries, the European Commission and Parliament.

But the battle lines are fluid. France, with a more nationalistic, conservative government than at the previous IGCs on the single market and the Maastricht Treaty, switches sides depending on the issues involved.

Further inputs into the complex equation are the potentially conflicting interests of the Union's bigger and small states, the presence at their first IGC of the Union's three newest members and the close attention that will be paid to the proceedings by the applicant countries.

The challenge of enlargement was not on the agenda when the drafters of Maastricht agreed to return to the negotiating table in 1996. As a result, the agenda they foresaw was less extensive, but potentially no less controversial for that, than the one now emerging.

The Maastricht Treaty commits member states to examine six areas: the three-pillar structure on which the Union now rests, a common defence policy, the operation of the common foreign and security policy, the scope of co-decision, the possibility of new treaty policy chapters on energy, civil protection and tourism, and the possible reclassification of EU legislation in a hierarchy of Community acts.

Since that agenda was established in 1991, EU governments have formally added to it the need to reconsider the Union's budgetary policy, the number of European Commissioners and the operation of the qualified majority voting system.

The list continues to grow: a more flexible Union, employment, citizens' rights, internal security among the 15 member states, more democratic and transparent procedures, and the role of national parliaments are all subjects which have forced themselves on to the agenda.

The Italian EU presidency has identified 35 individual issues it believes should be tackled and answered by the IGC. But in essence, the questions can be boiled down to three key themes: creating effective institutions for a wider Union, ensuring the Union has a clearer identity on the world stage and bringing the Union closer to its citizens.

It is a daunting agenda, particularly if something more than diplomatically-constructed hollow phrases are to emerge. The task is made all the more difficult by the need for unanimity on every issue - a requirement which virtually guarantees the IGC will not be concluded this side of a British general election.

That election must be held by May 1997 at the latest, a timetable which will ensure that the Italian presidency will kick off the negotiations and its Irish successor will try to broker agreements on most issues, leaving the Dutch, who take over the EU presidency on 1 January next year, the most likely member state to organise the final seal of approval.

Such a scenario would provide a somewhat ironic re-run of the Maastricht negotiations almost six years earlier. But most participants hope the parallels will stop there and that the final outcome will receive a more sympathetic reception from the public and national parliaments than that accorded to the Treaty on European Union.

To counter a prevailing spirit of suspicion and hostility, governments and EU institutions are committed to a more public debate. The emphasis this time round is on communicating and explaining policy objectives, rather than presenting them as faits accomplis.

That concern has led to a 50-million-ecu information campaign and a raft of policy papers from governments, EU institutions, think-tanks, non-governmental organisations and even individuals. Those involved are almost drowning in a sea of paper as they face demands ranging from an overhaul of EU decision-making to giving animals treaty status as “sentient beings”.

However, the argument over the European Parliament's involvement in the IGC has demonstrated that promising and practising more openness in the year-long negotiations are two very different things. The Commission, with its technical expertise, is assured a place at the table, but directly-elected MEPs have no such guarantee.

Nor, say critics, is sufficient thought being given by governments to simplifying the bewildering array of EU treaties and legal texts. A comprehensive exercise to consolidate them in one text, discarding redundant and repetitive articles, would present a more accessible and easily understood picture of the Union to a wider public.

The European Parliament, with the help of Lausanne-based academic Dr Roland Bieber, has already demonstrated how that could be achieved.

Bieber has combed through the EU texts and consolidated the 1,000 articles they contain into a single constitutional document of just 311 articles.

But as the Union prepares to move from the preparatory stage of the IGC to the negotiations themselves, warning noises are being heard about the need to keep the exercise in perspective.

“The Union must be careful not to try to use treaty amendments instead of genuine political will to deal with problems. Look at employment. Simply writing it into the treaty and creating a committee is not going to achieve very much unless governments actually commit themselves to concrete action. They could do that now without treaty changes,” warns one EU diplomat.

Another points to the need to keep the wider challenges in focus. “Frankly, the debate on knocking out the third stage of the co-decision procedure is pretty trivial compared to the revolutionary impact of the information society or the rise of Islamic fundamentalism,” he suggests.

The same, but less apocalyptic message came from EU leaders last December. The IGC, they agreed, was just one of many challenges facing the Union in the coming five years. The others involved the introduction of a single currency, preparations for enlargement, reform of the Union's finances, establishing a new European security architecture and deepening contacts with neighbours stretching from Russia to the Mediterranean.

But the starting point for most of these involves finding answers to questions about the Union's relevance to European electorates and its ability to handle internal and external challenges.

If the Union cannot agree on the remedies or tries to pass them on to yet another IGC, then those wider goals and its own reputation will be in jeopardy.