Astonishment at Nice comments

Mr Romano Prodi's statement that EU enlargement is legally possible without the Nice Treaty was greeted with astonishment in European capitals yesterday morning. One senior EU diplomat described the Commission President's remarks as "a political catastrophe" and another said he was "amazed" by the comments.

Commission officials were in contact with the Government from early yesterday morning and Mr Prodi moved swiftly to clarify his attitude to the treaty. Before he left for Dublin, he told reporters in Stockholm that the Nice Treaty was a necessary political condition for enlargement and suggested that yesterday's Irish Times headline was misleading.

But Mr Prodi's spokesman said that the Commission President accepted that yesterday's report was "an accurate record of the interview".

The headline on The Irish Times report - "EU enlargement is possible without Nice, says Prodi" - was taken directly from Mr Prodi's remarks.

In his interview with this paper, Mr Prodi said that, legally, the ratification of the Nice Treaty was not necessary for enlargement.

"It's without any problem up to 20 members and those beyond 20 members have only to put in the accession agreement some notes of change, some clause. But legally, it's not necessary," he said.

At the Commission headquarters in Brussels yesterday, Mr Jean-Christophe Filori said that, even if enlargement was legally possible without the treaty, the institutional reforms agreed at Nice were indispensable.

"If the treaty is not ratified, technically there is a way to go for other solutions. But that's not the way we're looking for," he said.

After last week's referendum result, Mr Prodi asked the Commission's legal experts if enlargement would be possible within the terms of the Amsterdam Treaty. He was told that it would be possible to accept new members by including extra clauses in each accession treaty.

Officials from some EU member-states disagree, arguing that Amsterdam makes enlargement conditional on reducing the size of the Commission and other reforms.

Larger member-states agreed to give up their right to appoint a second commissioner only in return for the re-weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers and one EU diplomat said that it was impossible to implement in isolation one element of the reforms agreed at Nice.

Mr Filori said the Commission was confident the Government would find a way to ensure that the Nice Treaty could be ratified.

"The political message today is that we assume we will go on with ratification. If at the end of the day it appears we have to look at another solution, we'll look at it," he said.

In a separate development, the Belgian Finance Minister, Mr Didier Reynders, said his government would start a debate on an EU tax during its six-month presidency of the EU that starts next month.

"We're talking about direct financing by citizens and firms without increasing the overall burden of taxation," he said.

In Luxembourg yesterday, the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Ms de Valera, said she supported the establishment of a Forum on Europe. But she repeated her opposition to further European integration and invoked the spirit of Charles de Gaulle in defending the influence of the nation states.