Twisted compromise leaves EU with la même chose

The compromise on a new treaty reached at last week’s (21-23 June) summit was so twisted that it allowed most government leaders to return home claiming victory.

The attempt to reconcile those states where the constitution was rejected with those which had approved it and those which would have rejected it, but for different reasons, was always going to be difficult. What made the negotiations even tougher was the presence of two ghosts at the table in addition to the 27 government leaders: Gordon Brown, who yesterday (27 June) became British prime minister, was constantly consulted by Tony Blair, while Jarosław Kaczynski, Poland’s prime minister, decided from Warsaw on what concessions his twin brother Lech, the president, was allowed to make. "We are negotiating with the wrong brother," said Andrew Duff, a British Liberal Democrat MEP, on Friday (22 June), "we need Jarosław here."

"He is the puppeteer. It’s not easy to negotiate in these conditions. We already have Brown doing this from London. Blair is on the roof calling all the time."

A senior European Commission source muttered that the negotiations with the UK were further complicated because "we don’t only have red lines, we also have Brown lines".

Poland’s double-act performance was aimed in part at adding drama for the domestic audience to a negotiation in which the Kaczynskis had to make a U-turn.

Poland ended up accepting, as the sun was rising on Saturday, a compromise on a new system of voting in the Council of Ministers which was quite similar to the one offered by the German presidency 11 hours earlier - and rejected by Jarosław.

In both schemes, double-majority voting would kick in in 2014. But under the final deal, for a three-year transition, a country can ask for votes to be weighted according to the Nice treaty. It was Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister and the veteran of European Councils, who came up with the transition idea.

One diplomat muttered: "Thank God that the transition is between 2014-17 and not 2014-18, it would have been a sinister joke, after Poland brought the war, capitulation and so on into the discussion."

Officials said that Poland’s chief concern was the adoption of the next medium-term budget (2014-20). The overall level of funding and spending priorities are agreed by unanimity, but legislation for the underlying programmes and spending rules is decided by qualified majority.

Poland showed where its priorities lay when it let slip away Germany’s initial offer to give it more MEPs as part of the package on voting rights, but insisted on a declaration on its right to legislate on family law and morality. "This shows the Kaczynskis’ lack of interest in the European Parliament. They see the EU as a club of nations where governments call the shots," said one Parliament official.

The deal with Poland was not brokered by the German presidency, but by a five-country negotiating group comprising Juncker, Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, José Luis Rodríquez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, and Lech Kaczynski with Lithuanian diplomats sometimes shuttling between Poland and the rest.

Sarkozy claimed he played a crucial role in securing a deal, suggesting that the tense relationship between Poland and Germany, still burdened by history, made agreement difficult. French diplomats said that Merkel called Sarkozy on Friday evening to tell him that Jarosław had rejected the compromise and that she intended to call a treaty-drafting intergovernmental conference (IGC) without Poland’s agreement. But even Sarkozy’s intervention - he immediately called Jarosław - could not persuade Poland to accept the deal. It was only after the leaders of Spain, the UK and Luxembourg had stepped in that it was possible to find an agreement. The summit showed that the Franco-German motor, although strengthened after Sarkozy’s election, is not powerful enough to drive Europe forward in the enlarged EU.

Many diplomats believe that Merkel never intended to launch an IGC without having Poland on board. To have done so would have risked damaging the prospects of agreement on a treaty. Negotiating with an isolated and bitter Poland during the IGC would have been even more difficult and launching an IGC with an open mandate on one point, the voting system, would have tempted other states to open other institutional issues.

But Merkel used the threat - leaked to the press and backed up by the distribution to delegations of a revised draft mandate for the IGC that completely ignored Poland’s claims - as a way of forcing the Kacyzn´skis back to the negotiating table. Once news agencies had reported that Germany was ready to launch an IGC without Poland’s agreement, "it only took half an hour for Polish diplomats to return and resume talks", said one diplomat. "For them it was important, though, that the deal was done in the group of five states, and not with Germany."

Much noise was made around the summit of the Sarkozy-inspired deletion of a reference in the constitution to free and undistorted competition as an objective of the Union. This deletion, which has no legal effect on the EU’s powers to pursue a robust competition policy, is what the French president can describe at home as a victory. He can claim to have delivered a blow to Anglo-Saxon liberalism and argue that, as the new treaty is different from the constitution, he will not call a new referendum. According to diplomats, the English press’s "hysteria" about the deletion, presented as a massive concession to continental protectionists led by France, helped him enormously. "Sarkozy need do no more than show the headlines in the English press when he explains why no referendum is needed," said one diplomat.

The summit gave Guy Verhofstadt, Belgium’s federalist-minded prime minister who was attending his last summit, the chance to put up a last fight to defend the EU’s institutions against member states’ attempts to claw back powers. After Poland, Belgium was the second country at the summit to veto the presidency’s compromise, objecting to giving too strong powers to national parliaments over the Commission’s proposals. He had a bitter argument with Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, who wanted a simple majority of national parliaments or governments to be allowed to kill Commission proposals. "It was not the Commission which defended its right of initiative, as it should have done, it was Verhofstadt who defended it," said one Council diplomat. "Speaking in the name of some other countries, he restored the balance slightly in the Commission’s favour."

Verhofstadt’s argument with Balkenende provided additional evidence that "Benelux is dead", according to senior diplomats.

"Belgium and the Netherlands do not agree on anything anymore. They are always on opposing sides of arguments on economic or political issues," said one senior Commission source.

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the summit was the fact that leaders spent almost 30 hours wrangling about "superficial power games and presentation", as one diplomat put it, while not touching the crucial elements of the new treaty: the extension of qualified majority voting and co-decision for the European Parliament to dozens of new areas.

"The leaders fought tooth-and-nail over some things, which appeal to their egos, but left the essential apart," a diplomat said.

"The real progress of the constitution was kept far away from the spotlight - and protected."

The compromise on a new treaty reached at last week’s (21-23 June) summit was so twisted that it allowed most government leaders to return home claiming victory.