THE changes in the EU treaty agreed at Amsterdam would have to be put to the people in a referendum, the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, said at the conclusion of the summit yesterday morning. Such a referendum is not expected until next year, although no firm decision has been made, and the incoming government will be responsible for the timing and passage of a referendum.
There has long been political consensus that a referendum is needed, and Mr Bruton said he believed certain changes were agreed at Amsterdam that had constitutional implications, and would therefore need to be ratified by the people.
Mr Bruton said he was disappointed with the lack of progress on key institutional reforms. But he said Ireland had achieved its own key objectives of retaining the right to nominate an EU Commissioner and retaining the passport free travel area with Britain in a satisfactory way.
The extension of qualified majority voting was "modest" and he was disappointed that it was not more significant. "I am particularly disappointed at the quarter from which the opposition to that has come," he said, in a reference to the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl.
The low level of success in reforming the institutions was due partly to the lack of time available for political decisions, he maintained.
Although the IGC has been going on since March 1996, "in terms of making the necessary political judgments, work did not start until after the British general election. We were not even able to start until then, and then we had the French election. The time for political deal making was very short. We should take that into account when considering that not everything was achieved.
"We achieved what we set out to do, to agree a treaty that prepares the Union for enlargement," he said, while agreeing that it was not as ambitious as hoped for.
The EU's emphasis was now firmly on the single currency issue, and this might have contributed to the lack of progress on treaty reform. "Because the single currency is such a big undertaking, it has led to a slowing down of commitment in other areas.
He also accused those who framed the Maastricht Treaty of bearing some responsibility for the lack of progress on key issues at Amsterdam. "At Maastricht they set up a number of issues to be dealt with now, and they probably knew it could not be done. That's a lesson people can learn from this: if you say you can't deal with a problem now and you decide to let four years elapse before dealing with it, those years will elapse and you'll have to face it then anyway."
He pointed to parts of the new treaty which, he said, would bring the work of the EU closer to its citizens. "There are new measures in the fight against crime which the Irish presidency put a lot of work into. There is a strengthening of the treaty in relation to consumer protection. There are new provisions relating to public health and to the safety of blood products."
He listed the provisions on social exclusion, sustainable development and gender equality. There were also provisions to enable the EU to play a more important role in international affairs.
Ireland had achieved its main national objectives, he said. Firstly, it would hold on to its right to nominate a commissioner, and when that issue was reopened some years hence Ireland would have a veto on any proposal to remove that right.
Secondly, Ireland had been allowed to opt out of the Schengen agreement on the abolition of border controls. This allowed it to keep the common travel area with Britain, without the need for border controls. At the same time, Ireland can easily opt in to aspects of Schengen in future, such as police cooperation, should it so choose.
Mr Bruton also said the suggestion that the EU be merged with the Western European Union had been "put on an even longer finger than before".
"The new flexibility instrument in the treaty will be helpful in allowing some members to move forward more quickly," he said. Once the EU enlarged, not all states would be able to proceed at the same pace.