October 20, 2003	Monday	Sha'aban 23, 1424

BRUSSELS: Summit talks last week on a new constitution designed to get the EU in shape for its biggest enlargement yet set the stage for weeks of furious haggling before an end-of-year deadline, observers say.

Leaders of the 15 current and 10 incoming member states laid out their wish-lists at the European Union summit on Thursday and Friday on how the bloc should manage its affairs when it expands in May.

The EU’s Italian presidency wants to have an inter-governmental conference (IGC) on the constitution wrapped up at the next EU summit in mid-December, well ahead of the enlargement and European Parliament elections next June.

But big obstacles remain after the Brussels summit, and some fear the December gathering could descend into the kind of acrimonious mud-slinging that characterized the EU’s last attempt to write a treaty.

The Nice treaty laying down the framework for EU expansion was clinched after four days and nights of negotiations on the French riviera in December 2000 which, according to EU legend, ended only when the caterers said they’d run out of food.

The Italians hope to have the bulk of a constitutional deal in place by the end of next month, following further talks among foreign ministers and bilateral contacts with member states.

A special summit, convening the heads of government for lunch in Rome, could also be in the works around November 20 or at the end of the month.

The constitution, which was drafted by a convention chaired by former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, is meant to overhaul the EU’s institutions so that it can cope with the demands of a bigger and more complex membership.

Among notable innovations are proposals for a new president elected by the member states to lead the Union for two-and-a-half years, and a “foreign minister” to help him represent the EU on the world stage.

The Brussels summit saw a consensus emerge in favour of the two powerful posts, although the details of how the two officials would work day to day remain to be hammered out.

But on other constitutional novelties, the bloc is riven by divisions pitting its biggest and most influential members — Britain, France, Germany and Italy — against the smaller ones.

Giscard d’Estaing proposed paring down the European Commission to 15 voting members and 10 non-voting ones in a bid to keep the EU’s executive arm manageable after enlargement to 25 countries and beyond.

But smaller member states are adamant they want to retain a fully empowered member of their own on the Commission, which they see as the protector of their influence in Brussels against a cabal of the “big four”.

Poland and Spain are meanwhile fighting fiercely to retain the disproportionate voting power they won at the chaotic Nice summit, causing passions to rise at the Brussels talks.

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said the pair were staging a “hold-up” of their EU partners which “seems to me to have a not very pro-European connotation”.

Some kind of trade-off will have to be found if the December deadline is to be met, possibly involving an extra commissioner for the bigger countries and more seats in the European Parliament for the smaller.

But those who fear a stitch-up point out that Giscard d’Estaing’s convention was set up precisely to avoid the type of unseemly horse-trading that created the much-reviled Nice Treaty.

“A middle-of-the-night, under-the-counter deal, in which Council votes or seats in the European Parliament are handed out from a Christmas stocking, will discredit the noble enterprise we have undertaken,” Parliament president Pat Cox said.

All the indications, however, are that the IGC will go down to the wire.

An Irish diplomat said that his government, which will succeed Italy in the EU presidency from January, is making “contingency plans” just in case the talks go beyond December. —AFP