APPENDIX 2
MEMORANDUM FROM MR RICHARD CORBETT, MEP
(YORKSHIRE AND HUMBER REGION) SOCIALIST GROUP CO-ORDINATOR, CONSTITUTIONAL
AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Introduction
The Millennium is to see yet another revision of
the EU treaties. The fifteen governments agreed in Cologne to
convene an Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) for this purpose
early next year, but restricted to the three subjects known as
the "Amsterdam leftovers", namely the size of the Commission,
the weighting of votes per Member State in the Council and the
extension of qualified majority voting — all essential for
the enlargement of the EU to take place successfully. However,
many are pressing for a wider agenda.
What should the UK's position be on the three issues
and on the proposals for a wider agenda?
Why now?
A protocol attached to the Treaty of Amsterdam committed
the Member States to addressing the three issues left unresolved
at the time of the Amsterdam negotiations. It specified that they
should be addressed before a single new state entered the Union,
but that a wider reform would be necessary when the number of
Member States was due to exceed twenty.
In practice, there is a telescoping of these two
aspects as the "first wave" of countries joining the
EU is likely to total six (if not in one go, then within a few
years of each other). Furthermore, France, Italy and Belgium issued
a declaration on the occasion of signing the Amsterdam Treaty
to the effect that a wider reform would be necessary before enlargement.
This view is shared by the European Commission and the European
Parliament.
On top of that, new factors have emerged since Amsterdam.
The collapse of the Santer Commission highlighted the need for
a formal power for the President of the Commission to be able
to dismiss individual Commissioners. The Franco-British defence
initiative and events in Kosovo have again raised the issue of
European Union defence policy and the treaty changes necessary
to integrate the WEU into the EU. A number of inconsistencies
have been found in the Amsterdam Treaty. There is ever growing
pressure for more openness, transparency and clarity as well as
efficiency and democracy in the running of the EU institutions.
Last but not least, the heads of government meeting in the European
Council in Cologne launched a procedure to draft a Charter of
Fundamental Rights.
The issues
1. Size of the Commission
Under the current formula, a Commission in the enlarged
Union will total over 30 members and be more like an assembly
than a compact executive. Ideally, a Commission of between 12
and 15 members would be appropriate to the number of genuine portfolios.
However, this would require a Commission no longer comprising
a national of each Member State. Most Member States consider it
essential for the Commission to contain one of their nationals,
not to represent their government (which is not the role of Commissioners)
but to bring a degree of knowledge and understanding of their
country into the Commission and thereby also create a greater
public confidence and legitimacy for the Commission in every country.
It is therefore unlikely that an IGC would be able to agree on
cutting the number of Commissioners below one per country.
This would leave the Commission still somewhat oversized,
but palliative measures have been taken in this regard in the
Amsterdam Treaty by reinforcing the power of the President of
the Commission to allocate (and reshuffle) portfolios, to set
the political guidelines for the Commission and to choose the
other Commissioners with the national governments. He/she has
also been given greater individual legitimacy through a separate
vote by Parliament on the President of the Commission when he/she
is appointed. Since Amsterdam, President Prodi secured informally
(on the basis of undertakings made by the nominees in 1999) the
right for the President to dismiss individual Commissioners also.
The time has come to entrench this right in the treaty. Doing
so obviates the need for the European Parliament to be given the
right to dismiss individual Commissioners, which might undermine
the collegial nature of the Commission.
These changes mean that the Union should be able
to manage with a Commission of one per country at least until
we get to about twenty Member States.
Beyond that, it would be useful to limit the number,
despite the reticence referred to above. However, as changes are
increasingly difficult to secure as the number of Member States
increases, the principle of limiting the Commission to, say, twenty
members as of the year 2009 should be incorporated in the Treaty
now, (just as it was done for the Parliament in 1997 by fixing
already then a ceiling of 700 members).
Subject to a satisfactory deal on the re-weighting
of votes in the Council (see below) the UK should therefore argue
for:-
— one Commissioner
per Member State for the 2004-2009 Commission
— twenty Commissioners thereafter
— The President of the Commission to
be given a formal treaty based right to dismiss individual Commissioners.
2. Re-weighting of the votes in the Council
With the exception of Poland, all the applicant states
are small or medium sized. As a result, once they join the Union,
the "big four" states, although continuing to represent
a majority of the population, will have only about a third of
the votes in the Council. They have argued that this is unacceptable.
Smaller states, on the other hand, point out that there has never
been an issue in which the large states have lined up on one side
and the small states on the other and that the argument is therefore
purely hypothetical.
The discussion is affected by the parallel one on
the size of the Commission. If the larger states are giving up
their right to a second Commissioner as well as seeing their voting
strength in the Council effectively diluted, the chances of all
the large states accepting to ratify enlargement treaties on that
basis would be jeopardised. Some adjustment is politically necessary.
An easy way to do this would be for the larger states
to have, say, two votes extra each (moving from 10 to 12 for the
big four and 8 to 10 for Spain) as part of the overall package
in which they give up their right to a second Commissioner. At
the same time, the threshold for achieving a qualified majority
could be fixed permanently at two thirds of the weighted votes
(67% rather than the excessive 71% at present — in effect
returning to what was in the original treaties).
An alternative suggestion has been put forward namely
to require a dual or double majority in the Council namely of
votes and population. This proposal has a number of variations,
with different combinations of weighted votes and of populations
being put forward: on the voting side varying from a re-weighting,
to the current weighting or even a simple one-vote-per-state formula
combined on the population side with a majority of 55% or 60%
of the population. These variations and combinations thereof illustrate
the complexity of a "double majority" system. At a time
at which the EU system needs simplification and transparency,
it would make it still more complex. Furthermore, it is the Parliament
which represents the populations somewhat more accurately than
in the Council where the block vote per government is a long established
feature.
The UK should therefore support the option of
giving an extra two votes to each of the largest five states (subject
to a satisfactory deal on the size of the Commission) and setting
the threshold for a qualified majority at two thirds of the weighted
votes.
3. Extension of Qualified Majority Voting
(QMV)
This will be one of the most difficult issues in
the IGC, but the most crucial one if a Union of twenty-something
Member States is going to work effectively.
The "veto" has become an emotional subject,
especially in Britain, but the time has come to bite the bullet
and recognise that in most areas, we are more likely to suffer
from other people's vetoes than we are to gain from using our
own.
Any subject matter dealt with on the basis of a system
of unanimity and vetoes for over twenty states is one in which
no decisions will be taken (or, at best, slow painful decision
taking on the basis of an inadequate lowest common denominator).
If a matter is to be dealt with at all at EU level, then such
a basis is not the best one.
This could imply having QMV on sensitive issues such
as foreign policy declarations, harmonisation of indirect taxation
and so on. However, it should be recognised that on such sensitive
subjects, members of the Council invariably proceed with utmost
caution. Consensus remains the name of the game, but the possibility
that a vote might be taken is essential to ensure that bloody-mindedness
by a single Member State can be circumvented if necessary. In
practice, it often leads to reasoned argument and agreement, whereas
threats to the national veto lead to tension and conflict.
In the CFSP, it might be appropriate to introduce
QMV along with a system of derogation whereby any state voting
against a common position, a humanitarian action or the sending
of peacekeeping or peace-making troops would be exempted from
taking part in the action concerned. Real-politik would ensure
that, in such circumstances, the Union would find it unthinkable
to send, for instance, peace-keeping troops to the Balkans if
Britain and France were not in agreement. However, such a system
would prevent, for example, Greece or Malta, Latvia, Estonia,
Slovenia or Cyprus from preventing EU action. EU positions would
be adopted by QMV but each Member State would be sovereign in
deciding whether to sign up. In such circumstances, the EU would
be careful not to lose credibility by adopting positions that
don't have sufficient support.
The UK should therefore support the widest appropriate
extension of qualified majority voting within the limits of the
EU's field of competence. In the CFSP field, this should be used
to adopt EU positions on the understanding that the minority will
not necessarily be bound by the decision.
4. Other Issues to address
The UK should not be afraid of some other
issues finding their way onto the agenda of the IGC. There are
other issues that need to be addressed, and the creation of a
wider package can sometimes facilitate agreement in an IGC, all
the more so in that the three issues already on the agenda are
among the most controversial and difficult. This will be the last
opportunity for reform before IGCs become still more
difficult with still more Member States around the table.
Among the issues likely to arise are the following:
Integration of the WEU into the European Union.
This has begun to happen, but further aspects of
it require treaty amendment.
What happens to the WEU secretariat and how much
should be absorbed by the Commission and how much by the Council?
Should the functions of the WEU assembly be given to the European
Parliament (bearing in mind that these are purely advisory)?
The question of the size of the Parliament. The
treaty now limits this to 700, but enlargement after the first
wave will take us over that limit. The 2004-2009 Parliament should
therefore be elected on the basis of new figures. It is possible
for the first wave of six to come in and remain under the level
of 700 with only a minor adjustment for the existing Member States.
However, as any downward adjustment will be difficult, it is better
to bite the bullet within the context of a wider package in an
IGC. A set of possible figures is attached[255].
Flexibility: with so many
Member States, the issue of flexibility will inevitably arise
again. The Amsterdam procedures for triggering "closer co-operation"
are cumbersome and difficult to use. They should be re-examined.
Extension of co-decision.
Post Amsterdam, the EP now enjoys co-decision powers with the
Council for most, but not all legislation. The biggest exception
is agriculture, where the results of excluding Parliament have
not been notably successful. This IGC should tidy up what has
now become an anomaly and give Parliament co-decision powers on
all legislation that goes to Council.
Codification. The Amsterdam
Treaty began the process of codifying the series of overlapping
and repetitive European treaties into a single, more concise and
coherent text. However, this was a job only partially done (they
still contain over 1000 articles in four treaties) and should
be taken further in the interests of clarity, simplicity and therefore
transparency. This should satisfy those who are calling for an
EU constitution in that the treaties already constitute a constitution
of sorts (as they define the field of competence of the EU, the
powers of its institutions and the procedures for adopting policies
and legislation), but they lack clarity and accessibility. Codification
is a pragmatic way of addressing the issue.
A related matter is the suggestion by Jean Luc Dehaene
and Lord Simon to have two parts to the Treaty: a first part regrouping
all the main principles and procedures and a second part with
the details and policies. As such, this would be worthwhile, but
they also proposed that the second section be subject to an easier
amendment procedure. This is more controversial, but it might
be possible to allow parts of the second section to be
amendable in that way, as is already the case, for example, for
several protocols (amendable by Council by unanimity).
Charter of Rights. The
European Council has set in motion a procedure for the elaboration
of an EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. It envisages the drafting
of such a Charter for December 2000 by a body compound of MEPs,
national parliamentarians, and a representative of each national
government and the Commission. The results of this should be incorporated
into the treaties through the IGC.
European Court of Justice.
The Court has put forward some suggestions to streamline its procedures.
This is necessary to allow it to manage its growing workload.
The length of time it takes for a court ruling, due to the backlog
of cases, is already a problem with 15 Member States. These issues
should be tackled by the IGC.
EMU. There is a proposal
to allow the European Parliament to confirm the appointment of
the President and Board members of the Central Bank. At present
it holds a hearing and consultative vote on the candidates.
This would help counter the arguments of those who claim the Central
Bank is undemocratic, but without unduly changing the current
procedure. The Commission may well raise the issue of external
representation on monetary matters (and Art. 113).
These are a limited number of extra issues. There
is no prospect of a 100 issue IGC as at Maastricht and Amsterdam,
and an extension beyond the three "leftover" issues
should not be feared.
5. The Method
The traditional IGC method of secret negotiations
among foreign ministries was opened up considerably during the
Amsterdam IGC when all the proposals tabled were made public during
the IGC, the press were briefed after every meeting and the European
Parliament was allowed to send two representatives to the IGC.
However, their representatives could not attend all the meetings,
due to the opposition to this at the start of the IGC, of the
UK and French governments (both of which have changed). The UK
should now accept the presence of two EP representatives at all
the IGC meetings on the basis that they have the same status as
the Commission representative, i.e. they can contribute to discussions
and make proposals, although the IGC remains by definition intergovernmental
and it is the government representatives who are party to any
agreement and who sign the Treaty.
2 December 1999
255 See Annex to this Paper. Back
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