The gains and pains that will pave the way for Treaty reform

Date: 20/12/01

Laurence Frost reports on the key conclusions of the summit - and on the issues where the leaders failed to achieve consensus

EU Convention: The Laeken Declaration establishes a Convention to pave the way for Treaty reforms at the Intergovernmental Conference in 2004.

The Council appointed former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as its chairman, with Belgian and Italian ex-premiers Jean-Luc Dehaene and Giuliano Amato as vice-chairmen.

The Convention will be composed of 15 representatives of EU heads of state, 30 members of national parliaments (two from each member state), 16 deputies of the European Parliament and two Commission representatives.

Candidate countries will be represented in the same way as member states and will be able to take part in its proceedings, but will not be able to block any consensus which may emerge among the existing member states.

A 12-strong "Praesidium" will steer the work of the Convention: this will be composed of the chairman, vice-chairmen and nine members drawn from the Convention (one representative for Spain, Denmark and Greece during their stint of the presidency; two national parliament delegates; two European Parliament members and two representatives from the European Commission).

The Convention will start work on 1 March, when it will appoint its Praesidium and adopt rules of procedure.

The Convention will meet in Brussels and all its discussions and official documents will be in the public domain. It will seek contributions from trade unions, the business world, non-governmental organisations and academia. It is due to report in March 2003 to the Greek presidency, which will be holding a summit in Thesalonniki, with either different options or recommendations where consensus is reached. The heads of state will take the ultimate decisions at the 2004 Inter-Governmental Conference.

EU Rapid Reaction Force: unit declared "operational" despite Greek objections to a deal with Turkey giving it access to Nato assets. Officials said the force could begin "lower-level" humanitarian work in the Balkans and elsewhere as early as February 2002.

Enlargement: the heads of state officially named the ten countries that are on course to join the EU in 2004 - Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia. "Special attention" promised for ongoing accession talks with laggards Romania and Bulgaria; still no date for start of formal talks with Turkey.

Middle East: The leaders reaffirmed recognition of Israel's inalienable right to live in peace and security within internationally recognised borders and the establishment of an independent, democratic Palestinian state.

Its declaration called for immediate and unconditional implementation of the Tenet cease-fire plan and resumption of political dialogue under the Mitchell Committee guidelines.

Justice and immigration: leaders declared their intention to set up a common "service or mechanism" to police the EU's external borders and called for new proposals from the Commission to break deadlock over the current blueprint for a common asylum and immigration policy by 30 April. They endorsed justice ministers' agreement on EU Arrest Warrant.

What leaders failed to agree

Agencies: there was no deal on the sites for 13 new European agencies after Silvio Berlusconi and Jacques Chirac raised objections to Helsinki and Lisbon as the locations for the European Food Authority and European Maritime Safety Agency. (Not surprisingly, Berlusconi is backing Parma; Chirac supports Nantes).

The other proposed sites were: European Aviation Safety Agency (Cologne); European Rail Safety Agency (Lille); Eurojust (The Hague); Asylum and Migration Observatory (Athens); European Monitoring Centre for Drugs for Drug Addiction (Paris); European Police College (London); Community Agency on Visa Information Exchange (Strasbourg); Agency

for Security of Communications Networks (Barcelona); Bureau for External Border Surveillance (Rome); European Agency for Civil Protection (Milan); ITER Experimental Fusion Reactor (Cadarache, Provence, France).

With the prospect of an end-of-summit debacle on the cards as leaders squabbled over the sites, Verhofstadt halted discussions

and passed the buck to the Spanish presidency. In the meantime, the European Food Authority and fledgling prosecutors' office Eurojust will be "temporarily" based in Brussels and The Hague.

Community Patent: Agreement on simpler EU-wide system to protect inventions delayed until internal market ministers' meeting in Brussels today (20 December).

Details of the decisions taken the European Council, Laeken, 14-15 December 2001.