One week ahead of the European Council at Nice, the Taoiseach held talks in Dublin yesterday with President Chirac of France, who will chair the final negotiations in the Inter-Governmental Conference to prepare the EU for an ambitious enlargement. As has become clear during Mr Chirac's pre-summit tour of EU capitals, there is a growing fear that continuing disagreements will make it very difficult to reach a satisfactory conclusion at Nice. Dissatisfaction with France's handling of the EU presidency has become more vocal, largely on the grounds that it has promoted national positions rather than seeking out disinterested resolutions of contentious issues.
Mr Chirac heard the Government's major concerns, such as the case for Irish representation on the Commission, opposition to deciding taxation issues by qualified majority voting and the need for great caution in allowing smaller groups of EU states to use flexibility clauses in security and defence policies. He gave the impression of listening carefully, despite the recent chorus of criticisms. That is in keeping with his basic political interest in brokering a package deal to resolve the many outstanding disagreements. But to do that, he will genuinely need to compromise on exceedingly sensitive issues for France, in which the presidency has consistently expressed its own preferences.
Thus Mr Chirac has championed the case for capping the size of the European Commission, on the basis of equal rotation of large and small memberstates, rather than maintaining representation of each state. France has opposed a reweighting of voting systems which would differentiate it from Germany. And it refuses to extend qualified majority voting to intellectual property, citing the need to protect its cultural diversity. The cumulative effect has been to antagonise the smaller states, making them less willing to accept far-reaching reforms in the EU's institutions. It has also resulted in a fall-out with Germany, co-operation with which has been a long-standing French tradition and a motor for the EU, and has also increased the issues on which unanimous voting, and therefore potential decision-making gridlock in a much larger system, will apply.
It is quite a catalogue of disagreement so close to a summit. But everyone concerned knows the package deal will be done only in the final hours. The French very much want to secure an agreement, despite the obvious difficulties they face in reaching coherent and consistent positions on foreign and EU affairs between the Gaullist President and the socialist government led by the prime minister, Mr Jospin. An agreement is more than likely to be reached; the real problem is how it should be evaluated in coping with the large challenges of a continental enlargement. Ireland has a vital interest in a stable, peaceful and prosperous Europe regulated by an effective supranational EU combined with co-operation between its constituent nation-states. That this is what is at stake can easily be obscured by the legalistic language in which these negotiations are couched. A Nice Treaty should also be evaluated on whether it sets out a clear road towards a more accessible and comprehensible political procedure for future treaty changes.