Biarritz summit: Time for EU to face its problems

By Robin Oakley, CNN.com European Political Editor

LONDON, England -- Europe's leaders will get together in Biarritz on Friday for a summit which is crucial if the dream of enlarging the European Union to 30 countries is to be kept alive.

The 15, together with Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, will drink a toast to renewed democracy in Serbia with new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who will join them for lunch on Saturday.

IN-DEPTH   •  Embarking on expansion   •  EU enlargement map   •  History of EU growth   •  Nice: Europe's next steps   •  What kind of Europe?   •  Key leaders' views

The leaders will discuss the crisis in the Middle East and seek to coordinate a strategy on fuel price protests. And, privately, most of them will agitate quietly about the struggling euro.

But the main business will take them back into a wrangle which has been going on for years. Their French hosts will hope to sting the other 14 leaders into a sense of urgency over the institutional reforms which have been ducked at previous summits and which must be agreed by the year's end if the EU is to be ready as promised to admit more countries from 2003 onwards.

To ensure that an enlarged EU is not paralysed by indecision, the French want agreement by the end of their turn in the EU presidency at Nice in December on four key constitutional issues left out of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997:

  • The number of commissioners who will run the EU in the future.

  • Whether to extend the qualified majority voting (with no national vetoes) to many more issues in Europe.

  • The weighting of national votes in the decision-making Council of Ministers (re-aligning voting strength more closely with population).

  • Whether to allow a small inner core of EU members to link themselves more closely in "enhanced cooperation" without any of the others being able to apply the handbrake.

The French have identified 46 areas where they say the national veto should give way to qualified majority voting (QMV). All 15 countries are agreed on the need for change. None have agreed yet to any specifics. But their hosts hope the Biarritz summit will concentrate minds and open the way to the necessary tradeoffs and compromises.

The United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden are reluctant to see much increase in QMV and others like Portugal are resisting the idea of any inner core developing into a formalized two-tier Europe (a concept also resented by applicant countries for an enlarged Europe). But British Prime Minister Tony Blair has softened his previous resistance to "enhanced cooperation."

The larger countries like Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Spain have indicated they will settle for having only one commissioner each instead of the two they have at the moment. But that is only if they get the re-weighting in their votes they are seeking in the Council of Ministers. Smaller countries are resisting the idea that some of them should do without a commissioner at all. Much horse-trading lies ahead.

Robin Oakley: "The French have sense of urgency"

The Biarritz summit also will consider the proposals for a European Charter of Rights. For a while this looked like another flashpoint, with the UK fighting against the idea of a legally enforceable charter adding new workers' rights. Blair's negotiators were insisting the charter should be no more than a showcase tabulation of existing rights, while the French sought a wide extension of social and economic rights in the workplace.

British government sources claimed on Wednesday that it has been agreed the document will be advanced at Nice as a political declaration, not as a legally binding treaty amendment. There will only be a row at Biarritz if the French and Germans revive efforts to make the charter legally binding.

On fuel prices, EU leaders have had a rude shock. Coming on top of the euro's struggles, their impotence in the face of street protests has sapped confidence in their leadership and in EU institutions. The commission has pledged to come up with a concerted strategy to combat future fuel shortages and will seek to intensify contacts with OPEC and the oil-producing nations. But suggestions that EU countries should more closely align their energy policies and taxes are likely to meet resistance.

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