Why Berlusconi will need a miracle to bring constitution talks to a swift close

Date: 02/10/03

Dana Spinant looks at the likely battlegrounds - and possible solutions - as the IGC gets down to business in Rome this weekend

EU LEADERS will kick off negotiations on the Union's first constitution this weekend in Rome, amid growing hostility towards the draft produced by the Convention on Europe's future, led by former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

Silvio Berlusconi, the host of the intergovernmental conference (IGC) that will hammer out a final version of the constitution, is set to urge his fellow leaders to commit to reaching an agreement by the end of the year.

“We have an objective to give Europe a constitution before the European elections [in June 2004]”, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told his counterparts in Brussels on Monday.

But the Italian prime minister faces a Sisyphean task.

His dream of being godfather to a new Treaty of Rome, 47 years after the pact that created the European Communities, risks being scuppered by member states likely to fight for a better deal.

Nineteen of the 25 countries taking part in the IGC want changes to some essential part of the draft constitution, for example on the composition and powers of EU institutions. Only the six founding EU members - France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries - are urging a swift adoption of the Convention's draft without changes. As one Belgian diplomat put it, this “support without reservation” stems from their desire to “save” the constitution, to avoid it being unravelled by lengthy negotiations which could bring everything into question.

“Even though we are not 100% happy with the text, we want to have a constitution, and we are aware that if everybody comes up with a list of things to be changed in order to get an ideal deal, we will all lose. There will be no better text on which everybody can agree,” he said.

The biggest bone of contention for the 25 government leaders, along with the European Commission and Parliament representatives who will sit around the negotiation table, will be the composition of the Commission.

Eighteen mainly small to medium-sized member states and accession countries, as well as the present Commission team, claim each country should be represented by a full commissioner with voting rights.

But under the deal proposed by the Convention, after months of wrangling on the issue, each member state would nominate their own commissioner, but only 15 would be able to vote.

Although the Commission and the 18 states subscribed to this arrangement back in June, when the Convention concluded its work, they now argue that the proposal is not acceptable and that “the IGC should change it without opening a debate on other institutional issues”, as Commission President Romano Prodi put it, when presenting the College's position for the IGC.

“The Commission's make-up should treat all member states equally by including a member from each country with the same rights and obligations,” Prodi added.

However, former Belgian premier Jean-Luc Dehaene, one of Giscard's two deputies on the Convention, has warned that Prodi is “playing with fire” as any attempt to change the deal on the Commission's composition may reopen the whole “institutional package”.

Large member states will not agree to change the provisions on the composition of the Commission, he cautioned. They fear a mammoth Commission with 25 members - 27 when Bulgaria and Romania join, probably in 2007 - will not be able to work efficiently. They are also concerned that, in a large Commission, the big member states will have only five votes out of 27, Dehaene acknowledged.

The second battlefield in the IGC will be the system of voting in the Council of Ministers, with Spain and Poland fighting to axe the Convention's proposal that decisions should be taken by a 'double majority'.

Under this plan, a law would only pass if backed by at least half the Union's member states, also representing at least three-fifths of the EU population.

Spain and Poland fiercely oppose this proposal and instead want to keep the so-called Nice system, under which each state is given a fixed number of votes according to its population size.

The Nice method is particularly generous to the two countries, which have been granted 27 votes in the Council - only two less than Germany, which has double their population.

According to a French diplomat, Spain and Poland have little chance of imposing the Nice system on their 23 partners. However, they could try to get as much as possible in exchange for accepting the double majority. One idea being aired is for the two countries to get a few more members of the European Parliament, to compensate for what they see as a loss of voting power in the Council. “Why not?” the diplomat added. “Two or three MEPs more, this is not a bad deal for them, as the European Parliament's powers will increase with the constitution,” he said.

Another sweetener for Madrid and Warsaw could be increasing the threshold required in order for a decision to pass, by requiring support from countries representing two-thirds (66%) of the EU population rather than three-fifths (60%). This would make it harder for the four largest member states (Germany, France, Italy and the UK), who together represent 58% of the population of EU25, to force laws through with the support of only a few small countries.

“Increasing the percentage of the double majority will give Spain the hope or the illusion that their agreement is still important for decisions to be taken,” the French diplomat said.

The third battleground is likely to be on the question of a European defence policy - with the UK leading the offensive against Giscard's text.

Despite recent positive signs at the Franco-Germany-UK summit meeting in Berlin on 20 September, Tony Blair's government is likely to strongly oppose proposals to introduce a voluntary mutual defence clause among member states. The British government claims such a clause would challenge NATO's own mutual defence commitment. The UK will seek to water down the proposals in order to avoid any developments that could challenge the primacy of NATO (and therefore the US) in Europe's defence. Countries keen on keeping neutrality, such as Sweden or Ireland, or those eager to protect NATO's role in Europe - for example Poland - are also likely to oppose the proposals.

A final bone of contention is likely to be the extension of qualified majority voting to areas in which the draft constitution preserves unanimity.

The Commission, and all member states bar the UK and Ireland, want decisions on administrative cooperation for combating fiscal fraud to be taken by qualified majority. London is unlikely to agree - as keeping the veto over fiscal decisions as well as over foreign and security policy is one of the UK's 'red lines'.

One thing seems certain as the IGC gets down to business this Saturday (4 October): Silvio Berlusconi will need a miracle to get his counterparts to reach a political agreement (if not to adopt a text) by the end of the year.

Article previews the Inter-Governmental Conference which began in Rome on 4 October 2003.