EU: There remains a lot of hard bargaining to be done, writes Denis Staunton in Brussels
European Union leaders arrive in Brussels this week for a meeting that could determine the institutional shape of the EU for years to come, affecting the lives of half a billion people from the west of Ireland to the eastern borders of Poland. The meeting, which starts on Friday morning, is due to last just two days but delegations have booked hotel rooms until next Monday, confident that negotiations will extend well beyond the deadline.
The leaders' task is to agree a constitutional treaty that will make the EU more efficient, to define more clearly the responsibilities of EU institutions and the member-states, to enhance the EU's ability to act on the world stage and to bring the Union closer to its citizens. If the Italian Presidency fails to secure agreement this week, the treaty negotiations will dominate Ireland's EU Presidency, which starts next month.
The road to this week's summit began at the Humboldt University in Berlin on May 12th, 2000, when Germany's foreign minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, called for Europe to be "established anew with a constitution" centred on "basic, human and civil rights, the equal division of powers between the European institutions and a precise delineation between European and nation-state level".
A month later, the French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, echoed Mr Fischer's call for a constitution, suggesting that it could be drawn up by a convention similar to the body that drafted the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights.
At the Nice summit in December 2000, EU leaders launched a debate on the future of the Union that would lead to a new intergovernmental conference by 2004. The leaders identified four issues for debate: how to establish a more precise delineation of competences between the EU and the member-states; the status of the Charter of Fundamental Rights; a simplification of the treaties to make them better understood; and the role of national parliaments in the EU.
The pressure for change in the EU was reinforced by Ireland's rejection of the Nice Treaty in a referendum in 2001, an event the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, ascribed partly to a sense of disconnection between the EU and its citizens. At a meeting in the Belgian royal palace at Laeken in December that year, EU leaders declared that the EU was at a crossroads and that it must become "more democratic, more transparent and more efficient".
The Laeken summit approved the setting up of a Convention on the Future of Europe, to be chaired by the former French president, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing and made up of representatives from the European Parliament, the European Commission, national governments and national parliaments in the EU's present and future member-states.
Unlike the intergovernmental conferences that drew up previous EU treaties, the convention met in public from February 28th, 2002, until July 13th, 2003. It was clear from the start that, whatever the convention agreed, national governments would have the final say in a short inter-governmental conference that was set up this summer.
It is remarkable, however, how much of the convention's draft text appears certain to be accepted, an outcome that vindicates the Government's decision to take a more proactive approach to the convention following the appointment of Mr Dick Roche as its representative late last year.
Among the changes already agreed are the consolidation of the European treaties into a single document, with the EU gaining a single legal personality. There will be a full-time chairman of the European Council who will chair EU summits and represent the EU abroad.
An EU foreign minister will co-ordinate foreign policy as a member of both the Commission and the Council of Ministers.
National parliaments will gain a role in the EU's institutional architecture for the first time, with the right to refer back to the Commission proposals that appear to overstep the limits of the EU's competence. The Charter of Fundamental Rights will gain legal force but will only apply to the application of EU law and will take into account national laws and practices.
A number of key issues remain to be resolved, however, including some of the most important questions governing how power is distributed within the EU. The deepest disagreement is over a proposal to change the way member-states vote in the Council of Ministers, with Spain and Poland insisting that the arrangements agreed at Nice should be retained.
Under the Nice Treaty, a proposal in the Council of Ministers must cross three hurdles to be passed - it must be approved by a majority of member-states; that majority of countries must represent at least 62 per cent of the EU's population; and the measure must win at least 232 weighted votes out of a total of 321.
The largest countries - Germany, France, Britain and Italy - have 29 votes each, Poland and Spain each have 27 and other countries have fewer votes, with Malta commanding just three. This allocation of votes does not reflect population size, given that Germany, with 80 million citizens, has 29 votes while Spain, with only half of Germany's population, has 27.
The convention proposed a simpler voting system called a double majority - a majority of member-states and representing at least 60 per cent of the EU's population. Germany has made the change to double majority its top priority in the treaty negotiations but Spain and Poland have made clear that they cannot accept the proposal.
Any compromise on voting in the Council of Ministers could be linked to the resolution of a dispute on the future composition of the Commission. The convention proposed that all member-states should nominate a commissioner but only 15 should be allowed to vote. An overwhelming majority of member-states want to retain their right to nominate a commissioner with full voting rights and even the biggest countries now accept that the convention's proposal cannot survive.
As in all EU treaty negotiations, some of the most sensitive bargaining will be over plans to abolish the need for unanimity, which gives every country a potential veto, in some policy areas. Ireland's chief concerns here are over moves to abolish the veto on measures on tax fraud and rules of criminal procedure.
The preamble to the draft constitutional treaty refers to Europe's "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance" but some countries, recently joined by Ireland, are pressing for an explicit reference to the Christian tradition. Others, led by France, argue that such a reference could undermine the secular nature of the state and send the wrong signal to Europeans from different religious traditions or from none.
EU leaders and diplomats are preparing for some long nights in Brussels this weekend and nobody is betting on their chances of success in securing a deal. If they do agree, the constitutional treaty must be ratified by all 25 present and future member-states before becoming law.
The leaders will be conscious that a number of countries, including Ireland, will hold referendums on the treaty, leaving their citizens to judge whether they have kept their promise to make the EU "more democratic, more transparent and more efficient".