Deense Europarlementariër analyseert falen IGC (en)

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - The draft EU Constitution, including protocols and declarations, takes up about 600 pages. Negotiations on all these pages have been finalised except for one important sentence on the system of voting in the Council of Ministers.

This one sentence was the reason for the breakdown of the summit in Brussels. This one line defines how much influence each country should have in the Council of Ministers, and clarifies the conflicting interests among the member states.

Nice Summit

During the Nice summit, Spain and Poland were each given 27 votes and thereby achieved superpower status. Germany now declares it to be unfair that Poland and Spain have the same influence as Germany in the Council, when only the sum of the two countries' populations add up to that of Germany.

This sounds very intriguing, but was nevertheless how the votes were distributed. A compromise, where Poland was given a large number of votes in the Council in return for a poor negotiation result, not achieving equality among the countries, was reached.

The Polish government promised its voters that the country would enter the EU on the terms agreed upon in Nice. The voting-system should assure that Poland achieves a better negotiation result in the next big budget-round for the framework budget 2006-2013.

Then the Convention comes along and says, "no you won't after all. Your influence will have to be halved before re-negotiation of the budget. Otherwise we won't be able to bully you during the negotiations."

It is not so strange that Poland reacts the way most of us would reactmif we bought a house worth one million and were told afterwards that we would have to pay two million.

France reluctant

In spite of this, both Poland and Spain were prepared for compromises at the summit. France, however, was not.

French President Jacques Chirac was inflexible and hoping for a conflict, perhaps because the enlargement of the EU slowly but surely will transfer control of the EU from Paris to Berlin or - even worse viewed from the Elysées-Palace - to London and Washington.

France sees its project conquered and at the last moment attempts to regain the initiative through further (french-controlled) integration in Europe.

The Nice Treaty contains the possibility of an enhanced co-operation among eight member states, decided by qualified majority. France will now seek to activate that decision, perhaps for the economic policy for the Euro-countries, for foreign policy and for defence.

French dream of Directory

The French dream is a Directory consisting of France, Germany and Great Britain, which would rule the rest of the EU, as well as making itself the counterpart, or the superior, to the USA.

Mr Chirac fought for five days and nights in Nice to maintain equality between Germany and France. He won the battle on the system of voting in the Council, and in return Germany got to keep the 99 members in the European Parliament, where the big members otherwise are obliged to reduce the number of members to 72.

The non-logical voting weights, which are now the cause of conflict, also resulted from this battle. During the summit this weekend, Spain suggested that Germany could raise its number of votes from 29 to 31. It was also considered amending the Convention's proposal of a qualified majority decision consisting of 60% to 62, 64, 65 or 66%, and to postpone the double-majority system to 2014.

Agreement on many other topics

The negotiations broke down before they became real enemies. That part of the negotiations was not prepared by signor Berlusconi.

Unlike the Danish Premier Fogh and other prime ministers, he would not travel to all the member states to feel the public pulse and consider possibilities of compromise. He said that they could come to him if they wanted anything. Italy was a wonderful country, also good at cooking.

He would rather spend his time on getting the food agency to the city of the Parma-ham. On this he succeeded, while Finland was given a chemical agency and eight other agencies were distributed to the good old members of the EU - and not a single one to the ten new countries.

On this background it is in fact quite remarkable that 2-3 months of intergovernmental negotiations and the EU summit actually resulted in agreement on everything else, apart from this one sentence on weighting of votes and double majority.

Blair admitted unanimity on taxes and social security but accepted that the Prime Ministers themselves should be able to move from unanimity to qualified majority, with the possibility of veto, however, for the national parliaments.

What was agreed

At present there is no final proposition agreed upon, as the above-mentioned areas only can come into effect when there is full acceptance and agreement on the whole text, including the last sentence with the important definition of qualified majority. However:

* There is consensus on transferring power to the EU on 15 new policy domains.

* There is consensus on transferring 40 domains from unanimity to qualified majority.

* There is consensus on making the charter of fundamental rights legally binding.

* There is consensus on giving the EU status of a legal person, to negotiate international agreements for all countries.

* There is consensus on creating a common EU foreign minister leading a joint foreign ministry with ambassadors, a fixed president for the Council and qualified majority for the election of all high positioned officials.

* There was even consensus on commencing the project of a common EU defence.

* There is furthermore consensus on entitling the next treaty "Constitution" and on the fact that it should have primacy over the national constitutions.

During the 15 meetings, the leading lawyers of the EU countries have continuously finished the writing of the texts, with authorisation from the member states. Therefore, an entire book of 600 pages now exists, only short of one sentence.

On Friday the 19 December the chairpersons of the political groups in the EU-Parliament will meet with the Irish presidency in Dublin. During this meeting, I am sure that my colleagues from the big groups will convince the Irish of the importance of overturning Spain and Poland with sticks and carrots before the summit in Brussels the 25 and 26 March 2004.

Whether they will succeed is uncertain. Technically, the negotiations of the Constitution has come so far, that it can still be signed on the Union's birthday the 9 May, if the last sentence can be negotiated.

Referendum campaign

A great variety of organisations also met in Brussels to commence the collection of signatures for a referendum on the EU-constitution.

They agreed on a joint logo with the text: "EU-Constitution - Ask the people". In countries where a referendum is certain, the demand is instead on holding a referendum in all EU-countries: "EU-constitution? Ask the entire EU".

This joint European collection of signatures can only be strongly recommended and supported, because a country cannot have two constitutions without letting the people decide which one of them they prefer.

JENS-PETER BONDE - Member of the European Parliament for the June Movement and Participant of the Suivi group in the Intergovernmental Conference.