Dutch treaty proposals seen to pose problems for Ireland

The EU's treaty-changing Inter-Governmental Conference moved into a new gear yesterday with the publication by the Dutch Presidency of a major elaboration of the Irish draft treaty and diplomatic confirmation that six countries are next week to launch an important initiative to commit the EU to the progressive creation of a defence union.

Both papers will be presented formally to foreign ministers on Tuesday when they meet in Rome for a stock-taking exercise on the IGC and, the Dutch hope, a significant stepping up of political engagement in the negotiations in a bid to meet the Amsterdam June deadline.

The proposal from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg to commit the EU to incorporate in three phases the Western European Union into the EU is likely to prove highly controversial in Ireland and the neutral countries, as well as in Atlanticist countries such as Britain and Portugal. Yesterday, however, senior French diplomatic sources were contending that neutrality was no longer compatible with EU membership.

The plan includes a commitment to a mutual defence guarantee, already provided for in Article 5 of the WEU Treaty although with opt-outs for the neutrals, and is understood to explicitly refer to NATO as the guarantor of such commitments.

Irish sources say that such provisions, if agreed, even with opt-outs, could be politically explosive at home and would almost certainly jeopardise what otherwise is expected to be a broad political consensus on ratification of the treaty when it is finalised. But they stress that they do not see any prospect of agreement on the proposals, which are likely to be strongly opposed by six countries.

The Dutch treaty proposals include important advances on the incorporation of the Schengen Treaty into the Union. Acknowledging that opt-outs for Ireland and Britain on the abolition of passport controls are inevitable, a spokesman for the Presidency nevertheless stressed that they would hope to facilitate talks between the two and the 13 on how the two could participate as fully as possible in as many parts of the treaty co-operation as possible.

The proposals thus appear to move in the direction of meeting Irish concerns that we might otherwise be sidelined in areas of judicial and police co-operation associated with the treaty.

But there are also likely to be problems for Dublin in the Dutch text. Irish diplomats are stressing the need to restrict the scope of" proposals for flexible integration - where some member states go ahead of the pack on issues that do not have support of all - and are likely to be cautious about suggestions to trigger such flexibility by qualified majority vote.

There is likely to be concern in Dublin over a substantial proposed extension of the scope of majority voting in the implementation of foreign and security policy whose broad outlines only would have to be decided by unanimity.