Wheels fall off Berlusconi bandwagon

Date: 18/12/03

To very little surprise, the intergovernmental talks on a historic EU constitution fell apart in Brussels at the weekend. Dana Spinant looks at the reasons behind the collapse

SILVIO Berlusconi's dream that his six-month stint at the EU's helm would go down in history has come true - but not for the reasons that the Italian premier was hoping for.

Berlusconi will not be remembered as the godfather of Europe's first constitution. Instead, the Brussels summit of 12-13 December will be remembered as a failure, marred by the host's uncouth sense of humour and an almost total lack of negotiation by government leaders.

It was no big surprise that they were unable to reach agreement on a final version of the constitution. The splits over how power should be shared between member states were so large that Berlusconi needed nothing short of a miracle to achieve a deal.

Nonetheless, nobody expected the summit to end before serious negotiations between the 25 leaders of old and new member states had even started.

The sudden announcement at midday on Saturday that the summit had collapsed took journalists and diplomats alike by surprise.

Many thought it was a negotiating tactic by the Italians to focus minds. After all, hadn't the same thing been about to happen at Nice in 2000, only for the talks to resume?

Sadly, this was not the case of déjà vu that many suspected. The summit really had failed this time round.

The "action", such as it was, took place in a small room on the fifth floor of the Council of Ministers' Justus Lipsius building, and at the luxurious Conrad Hotel on Avenue Louise, where Berlusconi held talks with "problematic" colleagues, one after another, in "confessionals". The Italian hoped that his "legendary charm" would be enough to persuade the prime ministers of Spain and Poland to accept the 50-60 double majority voting system, under which laws would be adopted if backed by a majority of member states representing 60% of the Union's population.

One suspects it would have taken even more than divine intervention to make Leszek Miller budge - and not only because he was in a wheelchair after his near-death experience in a helicopter accident. God, for his part, was probably feeling miffed at the prospect of being left out of the constitution.

After failing to move Miller or José María Aznar of Spain (though there were hints that the latter came close to a compromise), as well as Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder, guardians of the constitution, Berlusconi was forced to accept that the summit was finished, even before bringing everyone round the negotiation table.

The decision, though, was down to Jacques Chirac (on whose watch the doomed voting arrangements were made at Nice).

After seeing his now close friend Schröder at around 11am on Saturday, Chirac concluded that he was not having any of this "cheap bargaining" on the only thing that mattered - how member states could block EU decisions. (The double majority system weakens Spain and Poland's blocking strength in the Council.)

Shortly after the Chirac/Schröder meeting, Berlusconi called a halt to his confessionals and told everyone over lunch that they could go home.

There was no crisis atmosphere or outbursts of fury in the corridors of the Justus Lipsius. It was more like a "cold war, or a cold crisis", as one European Commission official put it.

From the very beginning, the leaders gave the impression that they had little to say to each other.

The first part of the meeting - dedicated to enlargement, security and defence issues and to a chat about international affairs - ended two hours before schedule. Even though they had planned to discuss foreign affairs over lunch on Friday, the 25 had nothing to say on this, which prompted Berlusconi to propose they should chat about "donne e calcio" (chicks and football).

"There was an atmosphere of fatality, with resigned people who did not even want to go for a good row between old friends to sort their problems out," said one foreign minister.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, said: "We have a certain illness in Europe. We do not love each other any more."

Although most participants admitted that the summit could have ended in deadlock whoever had been the host and whatever the strategy, they were puzzled by the nebulous nature of the talks.

There were four "phantom" proposals for a compromise on voting in the Council, which were never put on paper and presented to the 25 delegations. Supposedly, they covered a whole range of "acceptable deals" for Spain, Poland, France and Germany.

The first proposal was a reweighting of the number of votes that each member state had been granted under the Nice Treaty, essentially by giving a few extra votes to Germany. Originally a Spanish proposal, it was instantly rejected by Germany and France.

The second proposal was a slightly different version of the double majority system proposed in the draft constitution. In a bid to please Spain and Poland, the Italian presidency proposed that decisions be taken when backed by 55% of member states representing 65% of the population (as opposed to 50% and 60%).

Although Aznar is said to have accepted this, France and Germany did not.

Under the third proposal, that of a "rendezvous" clause, Italy suggested keeping Nice for the time being, with EU leaders meeting again in 2008 to decide to introduce the double majority system. Significantly, this decision would have been taken then by qualified majority. To some, this would be tantamount to deciding now to introduce the system, as Spain and Poland would not be able to veto it and could not constitute a blocking minority.

However, Poland was not sure about it, and France was not happy with decisions being postponed.

The fourth proposal was to postpone the introduction of the double majority until 2014. Madrid and Warsaw, as well as Paris and Berlin, were all against this, although for different reasons: for France and Germany it was too late, for Poland and Spain not late enough.

Although it was clear that none of these proposals was making everybody happy, diplomats believe that a negotiation at 25 would have made the debate more open and honest.

"There is a feeling now that we wanted to avoid a confrontation, a row, or saying the painful truth to ourselves," one German official commented.

"The truth is that we may have stopped wanting the same things, and that some painful decisions may have to be taken," he added.

A moment of truth was avoided on Saturday, when a declaration by the six founding members of the European Union, prepared mainly by Chirac and Schröder, was dropped at the last moment.

The statement, by which France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux states would have stated their ambition to deepen integration, could have been the beginning of a new, two-speed Europe.

The leaders of France and Germany have long threatened a pioneer, "core-Europe", instead of being forced to move at the speed of the least ambitious member states.

However, Chirac and Schröder refrained from making the declaration, after Juncker and Berlusconi insisted that the wrecked summit was not the right moment for such an announcement.

"Some could have seen it as a provocation," Juncker told this paper.

A Belgian diplomat agrees. "The other leaders would have thought that the founding members, but in particular France and Germany, were never interested in getting a deal on the constitution. They would have said we came to the summit with this declaration in our pockets, only waiting for the summit's failure in order to send it around. That would not have helped the general climate."

However, the declaration, which remains for the time being in Chirac's pocket, is expected to be launched very soon.

If the EU leaders have little to say to each other when they meet as all 25, perhaps they will have more to talk about when they gather in smaller groups.

Article looks at the reasons behind the collapse of the Intergovernmental Conference held in Brussels from 12-13 December 2003.