Spring promises an outline draft treaty for December

THE Tanaiste reiterated yesterday the Government's commitment to completing work on an outline draft EU treaty in time for the Dublin summit in December. Reflecting one of the central themes of the weekend, the desire of ministers to speed up work on the Inter Governmental Conference (IGC), Mr Spring said he would be consulting widely to see how the first Dublin summit - on October 5th - could contribute to strengthening the dynamic of the process.

The ministers heard a detailed progress report from Mr Spring's special representative on the IGC, Mr Noel Dorr.

There has been significant progress under the Irish presidency in the process Mr Dorr refers to as the "successive approximation" of texts, the laborious honing down of options as each clause of the treaty is discussed again and again.

The process is painfully slow and may give the appearance of being stalled, but as the German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, observed in Tralee "in Europe things often appear as if they are going nowhere but then suddenly move.".

These discussions have moved from the restatement of broad national positions to an attempt to negotiate new wordings. Mr Dorr has presented papers on each theme to each session of the ministers personal representatives suggesting a full range of possible approaches, redrafting and eliminating options as the debate proceeds.

In July they made inroads on security and defence, justice and home affairs, employment, and common foreign and security policy - most significantly, perhaps, was the commitment to put the so called Petersberg humanitarian and peacekeeping tasks into the treaty.

Last week in Brussels the group met again to consider transparency, external relations, fundamental rights, citizenship, subsidiarity, and the simplification of the treaty.

Next week they move on to institutional questions such as voting strengths in the Council and Commission, budgetary issues and the environment and then all over again.

Commission sources have been expressing some disappointment that the meeting last week failed to clarify the confusion over representation of the Union at bodies such as the World Trade Organisation on such issues as services and intellectual property issues.

The group did reach agreement in principle on transparency, a commitment to a treaty text specifying a right of access to documents but leaving the detail of procedures to individual institutions.

On citizenship, the representatives are finding what one source describes as difficulty in putting substantial flesh on a concept that Maastricht introduced. The problem is that to give specific rights to citizens - apart from the obvious voting rights - may be interpreted as depriving non citizens of those same rights.

Danish concerns that European citizenship should not subsume national identity will be met with a clause which is likely to say that the concept "shall complement national citizenship."

There is agreement that the treaty should contain more detailed references to fundamental human rights and the rule of law, and a willingness to consider sanctions up to suspension of member states which are involved in gross violations. There is still disagreement over the Union signing up as a body to the European Convention on Human Rights because of fears from some of a conflict of jurisdiction between the Strasbourg and Luxembourg courts,

The group is likely to back proposals to copper fasten equality between men and women and to allow some forms of positive discrimination to redress imbalances.

On subsidiarity, a concept first established by the Maastricht Treaty, there is agreement that the treaty should not renegotiate the principle but elaborate on it - in the form of a protocol or declaration.

There is growing acknowledgment that the British are playing a far more constructive role in advancing the preparatory textual work than had been expected. Some suggest the British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, would like to face a general election with a draft treaty with a few clear options as a stick with which to beat Labour.

If a text emerges from the Dublin summit which suggests that on key questions there is a broad 14 to one consensus, Labour may find it has to fight a "defend Britain from Europe" election.

For the time being, it appears, the British government and its 14 partners share a common interest in the IGC making progress.