Intergovernmental Conference - heading for a bad deal, or no deal at all?

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Created on Friday, 21 November 2003 00:00

The intergovernmental conference has come to a standstill. No breakthrough has been reached on the most controversial issues including the composition of the Commission, qualified majority voting in the Council or the role and responsibilities of the Union foreign minister. Given the fact that the Italian presidency is heading for striking the final deal on the Constitution before December, it is surprising that the negotiations have not in fact started. Clearly, there is a risk that the EU will be heading for a last-minute package deal similar to the one in Nice, creating a bad compromise and damaging the outcome of the Convention which has been discussing most of the issues in depth over the 18 months of its work. Or that the IGC will drag on even beyond the Italian presidency, without new ideas coming up anyway. Observers claim that this deadlock shows the structural problem of the enlarged EU which will have to work with 25 members. Quite unjustly, most of the responsibility for the deadlock is ascribed to the new member states who are said to have very rigid positions and who do not have the culture of negotiating and taking into account interests other than their own. In fact, if we look at the countries advocating most strikingly some amendments to the draft constitution, we will find old member states having the same rigid positions as the newcomers. Spain is no less willing to compromise on QMV than Poland is, except that perhaps it is using a softer language. On the composition of the Commission, the real driving forces pushing for change are countries like Austria and Finland. Austria has even assumed an unofficial role of the "like-minded countries group" leader. Where there is a real continuity is in the group of the founding six members who support the original draft produced by the Convention. The main line of argumentation is not to bury the fragile deal reached before Thessaloniki, in which these countries are strongly supported by the majority of MEPs and recently also by the Commission. However, the motives might be different. While France and Germany might feel quite comfortable with having the core ideas of the Franco-German proposal reflected in the draft, it does not have to be the same case for Belgium, the Netherlands or Luxemburg. Still, these three smaller countries do support the Convention proposal. The representatives of other member states, both the old and new ones, should rightly ask why.

The first problem always on the table is a long-lasting dispute over the composition of the Commission. The insistence on the representation of all member states in this institution at any given time by members with full voting rights seems paranoid. It is quite right to argue that especially the newcomers should have their representative in the Brussels executive. However, hardly ever we hear the argument that this will be the case since November 2004 when the new college will be voted in until 2009 when the new system should already be in place. This should be sufficient for the new members to get a grasp of what it is like to have a top European bureaucrat and how to cope with him or her. But if the like-minded countries insist on this system even after 2009, we are clearly heading for a bad deal. There is a strong resistance of big countries to accept the one commissioner per member state formula. The like-minded should realize that the deal will have to be a compromise and they cannot get something if they do not give something up. In this case, they would eventually have to accept the big countries preserving their second commissioner. This would hardly have any advantages.

Firstly, the college would grow far too big (it would have over thirty members) so some sort of internal re- organisation which would very much resemble the current two-tier system will happen anyway. This can be for instance by enhancing the number and role of vice-presidents. Furthermore, it will be more dangerous as the system will not be formalized and would actually depend just on the concept of the Commission president. Secondly, if the college is not operational enough, the centre of gravity will logically shift to the Council which will also hardly work in favour of the like-minded group. If this group wants to preserve a strong Commission that would be the engine of European integration, it must not take the risk of diluting the internal organisation. Otherwise it will just end up as a body supervising the internal market and the competition, as Juncker put it. Thirdly, if the compromise on the Commission will meet the like-minded group demand, they will lose on other fronts. Voting in the Council is an obvious example. The current stubborn positions of Spain and Poland, allegedly supported by some other states (Austria, Estonia, etc.) suggest that if these countries compromise, they will have to get something in return. An extra Commissioner or reference to Christianity in the Preamble might be an option. Spain has already shown some signs of flexibility by being willing to accept the new system, given that the demographic threshold be raised. This is, however, going to be hardly acceptable for countries who tend to think more in terms of pro-active approach and coalition building rather than blocking minority. The Benelux countries have already shown a strong resistance to this move. On the contrary, some countries would like to decrease the demographic threshold to get to 50-50% parity. So the vision of a compromise in not on the table either. However, if Spain and Poland find themselves very isolated, they could be pushed into accepting the Convention draft, perhaps with slight modifications.

Other controversial issues seem to be important psychologically and emotionally rather than practically. Having the reference to Christianity in the preamble might have a strong impact in countries like Spain and Poland, and recently a growing number of countries seem to align with them. The discussions around the Union foreign minister focus more on the name of the position rather than on his or her job description. Equally, the initiatives that might lead to defence avant-garde Europe do not seem to go too far, with the protocols that are supposed to set the list of countries that accept the mutual defence clause and the conditions for structured co-operation still not being negotiated.

It is difficult to judge at the moment when the breakthrough at the IGC will come about and what will be its outcome. Much will depend on the Italian presidency how they cope with the member states representations and what sort of compromise deal they will present. The kind of blackmail tactics trying to link the outcome of the IGC with other negotiations like the one on the next budget perspective do not seem to add much to the mutual trust.

However, there is one thing that makes the IGC special compared to the others - the fact that we do have 25 countries around the table show that it is impossible to come to a reasonable compromise and defend strongly national interests at the same time. If we want to make a sensible deal, everybody will have to give up more than ever before. In this respect, the fact that the Convention came up with something that can be considered a reasonable compromise is crucial. We could perhaps redraft the Constitution but for that we would need another Convention. The IGC cannot make a new, well-balanced sort of document that we have on the table by December.

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