An Inter-Governmental Conference of the European Union is preparing the way for crucially important decisions on its institutional structure. Its work is to be reviewed by the heads of government at Biarritz in France next weekend and final decisions with important implications for us all will be taken at a further meeting at Nice in December.
Little or nothing has appeared in our media about this conference, apart from pieces by Patrick Smyth for The Irish Times. RTE has had no English-language current affairs programme on the issue and an extensive two-hour presentation of the issues to an Oireachtas Committee last Wednesday was ignored by the media. The silence is deafening.
Let me try to break it. Three main issues, left over from the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations, are under discussion. They are the future size of the European Commission, the voting system in the Council of Ministers, and the extension of Qualified Majority Voting to areas where decisions currently require unanimity.
The European Commission has 20 members - two each for the five large member states and one each for the 10 smaller members. There are 12 applicant members, plus Turkey. If no change were made in the present arrangement for Commission membership, given that the population of Poland is similar to that of Spain, which has two commissioners, there would eventually be 33 commissioners - or 35 if Turkey were admitted.
The five larger member states argue that this would be far too large a Commission, and in the interest of "efficiency" they indicated a willingness to give up their second commissioners. The French Presidency has even suggested they could consider accepting a rotation that would occasionally leave one or other of them without representation - if agreement could be reached on holding membership to 15.
This sounds good, but the 10 smaller member states are rightly suspicious of, and indeed cynical about, their large partners' concern with Commission efficiency - for there is every sign that these five states want to move away from the present decision-making system, in which the Commission alone can propose new laws, and to shift the balance towards inter-governmental decision-making, which would be free of this constraint.
The growing evidence of a desire by the "big five" to establish a de-facto directoire has given rise to an unaccustomed degree of solidarity among the 10 smaller states, who are not prepared to accept domination by the "big five".
However, it is going to be difficult in the case of a very large Commission to ensure against the emergence of a hierarchical system. From the point of view of the smaller countries, it would thus be important for the role of the president of the Commission to be strengthened, so as to enable him to fulfil his role as guardian of the interests of Europe as a whole and to protect the Community system from becoming dominated by the larger countries.
A possible quid pro quo for the reduction of large country membership to one commissioner, combined with the retention of the principle of every state being represented, would be a modification of the voting system in the Council of Ministers - an approach that was in fact included in a protocol to the Amsterdam Treaty.
The larger states complain that because more smaller than large countries have joined the original Community of Six, the initial equal balance between large and small members has shifted against them, and will shift further with enlargement.
In principle, as part of a balanced package, some change in the weighting system for decision-making in the council to take more account of the populations of member states of ministers might be acceptable to the smaller as well as the larger states. There are, however, different proposals as to how this could best be achieved. At present a qualified majority requires 62 votes out of 87 on a Commission proposal, cast by at least 10 countries.
The proposals for change include such suggestions as a straightforward reweighting to favour the larger member states; the retention of the present weighting system but with an additional requirement that this majority come from countries which constitute either 50 per cent or 60 per cent of the Community's population; a Swedish suggestion for a re-weighting based on the square root of the number of million inhabitants of each state - which, however odd it may appear, would actually work quite well; and yet another which is much too complex to explain here. Perhaps the simplest proposal is by the
Commission - that a qualified majority decision shall require both a majority of countries and a majority of their populations. Although one can never exclude the possibility that in some specific case such a change from the present system could disadvantage some Irish interest, this would not justify us in vetoing one or other of these suggested changes in the system that were acceptable to all the others.
The third issue left over from Amsterdam is the extension of Qualified Majority Voting in its modified form to matters currently requiring unanimity. There is general agreement on the principle of a move in this direction, but each country has its own list of cases where it wants to keep the unanimity rule. Ireland has two concerns: taxation and some aspects of social and health policy.
On taxation, we differ from the rest of the Union in three important respects: we have uniquely low rates of corporate taxation - which with European Commission approval are about to be consolidated at 12.5 per cent in several years' time; we impose a very heavy vehicle registration tax; we exempt food from VAT. Because we wish to hang on to these aspects of our taxation system, especially the low corporate tax rate, we have opposed the introduction of Qualified Majority Voting on taxation issues - as does the United Kingdom, Sweden and Luxembourg, while Spain has a reservation on this proposal.
There is, however, a case for the introduction of some tax harmonisation measures to deal with issues such as tax evasion, fraud, and some environmental issues, and we are under pressure to accept certain modifications of the unanimity principle on such cases, although there is concern on our Government's part lest such changes prove the thin end of a wedge, or be used in ways that we cannot now foresee so as to undermine our basic position.
There are also concerns on our part about the extension of Qualified Majority Voting to aspects of social policy, including matters dealt with in negotiations between the social partners.
Finally, facing into enlargement, the Inter-Governmental Conference is also looking at changes that would affect the European Court - which as at present constituted is overstretched - the Court of Auditors, the Committee of the Regions and the Economic and Social Committee.
Another issue that also has to be faced is precisely how to modify the membership of the European Parliament so as to ensure that, as agreed at Amsterdam, its membership is held at 700, even after eventual enlargement by 12 or 13 more members. Different formulae under consideration could eventually reduce Irish membership of a 27-State European Parliament to between eight and 11 members.
Another major issue to be tackled at Biarritz, and later at Nice in December, is that of easing restraints on "flexibility" or "enhanced co-operation" - a group of states moving ahead on their own to achieve, for example, a higher degree of political integration. To the problems that could be posed for us by such a development, I shall return in this column.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie