EU leaders adopt human rights charter

By Robin Oakley, CNN.com European political editor

BIARRITZ, France -- The leaders of the European Union have agreed on a new Charter of Fundamental Rights.

But their summit in Biarritz, France, ended on Saturday with the 15 leaders still split on the constitutional reforms needed to prepare the EU for expansion over the next decade to as many as 30 countries.

The 15 welcomed news that an emergency peace summit is to go ahead in the Middle East and warmly embraced Vojislav Kostunica, the new leader of Yugoslavia, as a member of the "European family."

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The new charter, setting out for all 375 million citizens of the EU, more than 50 entitlements, such as the right to life, to education, to take collective industrial action, to consultation at work and to a dignified old age, was agreed by all the leaders and will be formally proclaimed at the Nice summit which will end the French Presidency in December.

There is still dispute, however, about the legal status of the document. The charter of rights is at present merely a political declaration, dismissed by the UK Europe Minister Keith Vaz as having no more legal validity than a comic book.

But Nicole Fontaine, the President of the European Parliament, urged the leaders in Biarritz to make the Charter legally binding and Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, has said it will inevitably become legally binding in time.

A majority of EU countries are currently against giving the document legal status but in a surprise intervention at the concluding press conference of the summit President Jacques Chirac of France left the question open.

He said that while the Charter would be adopted under the French Presidency at Nice, it would be for the Swedes, who follow the French in the revolving presidency of the EU, to determine the question of its legal status during their six months in the chair, beginning on January 1.

The Biarritz meeting was a staging post on the way to the key Euro-summit at Nice in December when the 15 countries have to settle on the reforms to equip the EU for enlargement.

They have to agree finally then on how many members to have in the European Commission, where France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK currently have two members each and the other countries one.

They have to settle the re-weighting of votes in the decision-making Council of Ministers to reflect more fairly the member nations’ populations.

They have to decide which EU issues should in future be decided by qualified majority voting (QMV) rather than be subject to a single nation’s veto, so as to prevent a paralysis of decision making in the enlarged EU.

And they have to settle whether a group of EU countries should be free to forge closer links and develop their integration (the so-called “enhanced co-operation” process), without having to gain the permission of all the others.

Chirac disclosed at the end of the Biarritz meeting that while progress had been made on enhanced co-operation and QMV there was still disagreement about the re-weighting of national votes and the size of the Commission.

With the large countries agreeing to scale down to a single commissioner if their votes are re-weighted to their satisfaction in the Council of Ministers, it appears to be developing into a battle between them and the small countries,who are resisting the idea of giving up their single commissioner.

The French President said that there was a choice between capping the number of commissioners and having places held in rotation by different countries or keeping to the principle of every country having one member.

Diplomats in Biarritz suggested the likely eventual compromise would be a commission with as many members as there are countries in the EU, but with the President of the Commission given enhanced powers to pick a strong group of vice presidents. In practice these would come to form a decision-making “inner cabinet.”

On “enhanced co-operation,” which would hasten the development of a two-tier Europe, Chirac noted “considerable progress.”

He claimed agreement on the “governing principles” which were that no country should be excluded from future membership of any such inner core which developed and that the inner group must accept all EU laws in full and the framework of EU institutions.

Still to be settled is the question of how many countries would have to be involved in an inner group and what should be the trigger mechanism to start it.

A softening of attitude by the UK, previously a staunch opponent of any kind of two-tier Europe, has been a key factor in the progress in Biarritz.

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