The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, has denied there is a rift between Germany and France but has admitted that a week before the EU summit in Nice, serious differences remain between member-states about planned institutional reforms.
Mr Schroder said that next week's summit could clear the last remaining hurdles on the way to enlargement of the EU, but only if member states could agree on "constructive compromises" to outstanding issues.
In a 40-minute speech to the German parliament yesterday, Mr Schroder pledged his full support to the French government, current holders of the EU presidency, saying he knew the summit was in "good hands".
Although drawing attention to the "well-known friendship" between France and Germany, Mr Schroder made no attempt to hide his government's determination to pursue institutional reforms that have brought it into conflict with France and other member-states.
Chief among those is the idea of extending qualified majority voting (QMV). Under QMV each of the 15 member-states has a number of votes on the EU Council based roughly on its population. Countries like Germany and France have 10 votes, Ireland has three.
Germany has called for QMV to be extended, arguing that refusing to let go of unanimous voting will prevent rapid decision-making as the EU grows in the future.
"We have not received the support we had hoped for among our circle of partners for our vision of qualified majority voting, but that will not keep us from energetically pressing our position," Mr Schroder said yesterday.
QMV is particularly important in areas including joint foreign and security policy and interior and justice issues, Mr Schroder said. He said there should be exceptions to QMV only when strict criteria were met, such as on defence issues or those that required parliamentary ratification.
Another reform that Germany will be pressing for in Nice next week is the principle of "double majority", which would see votes carried only if backed by a majority of member-states and a majority of the population. Owing to population differences, this would give Germany a larger vote weighting than all other member-states, something that has caused displeasure in France in particular.
Mr Schroder attempted to defuse any controversy yesterday by saying that Germany was flexible as to how this "double majority" might be implemented.
By using his speech to express once again his desire for an intergovernmental conference in 2004, Mr Schroder is bound to have ruffled French feathers. The French Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, has already condemned the idea as an attempt to look beyond the Nice summit.
"Europeans should not be given the impression that they are living on a permanent construction site," he said last month, adding that Mr Schroder's proposal risked encouraging governments to postpone negotiations on EU reform.
Germany's opposition parties welcomed Mr Schroder's speech, but the Christian Democrats' Speaker, Mr Friedrich Merz, criticised Mr Schroder for making no mention of the European BSE crisis. He also criticised the Chancellor for letting Germany's relationship with France deteriorate to a "touch and go" level.
