The difficulties of persuading the Irish electorate to vote for some of the proposals emerging from the Convention on the Future of Europe were spelt out to the French Minister for European Affairs, Ms Noelle Lenoir, at Leinster House yesterday.
Commenting on the proposal to limit the size of the European Commission to 15 members in a Union of 25 or more states, Mr Gay Mitchell, the Fine Gael chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs, said it would be "very difficult" to go back to the electorate with this formula.
"I really do feel strongly it is wrong to revisit the Commission size after Nice," he told Ms Lenoir. Nice had stipulated that when the EU reached 27 members, the number of Commissioners would be set at an unspecified but unanimously agreed level below that figure and nominations made on the basis of strict rotation.
"Any departure from that would be very difficult to tolerate or to sell," Mr Mitchell said. He added: "We are not running a spare-parts factory."
Looking ahead to the next referendum, he said: "We have to bring people with us." He said it was "disingenuous" to revisit the question of the Commission size before the larger states had even given up their second nominee, as agreed at Nice.
Mr Michael Mulcahy TD (Fianna Fáil) said: "We want an EU where all members are equal." He questioned the wisdom of interfering now with the delicate EU mechanism which had been "so successful".
He was disappointed that although as many as 16 countries had supported the establishment of an electoral college to choose the president of the Commission, the convention president, Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, had left it out of the latest draft. "Maybe majority doesn't mean majority in the French language as it does in English," Mr Mulcahy said.
Ms Marian Harkin TD (Independent) said: "We must ensure that the position of smaller states is respected." She added that there was a "sense in Ireland that the EU was in the process of becoming too powerful".
Mr Seán Haughey TD (Fianna Fáil) said: "We in this country view the outcome of the convention with a little trepidation because we know we must put the outcome to the people."
Mr Pat Carey TD (Fianna Fáil) said there was no "power-grab"taking place but he had "enormous reservations" about the proposal for a permanent president of the European Council.
Ms Lenoir, conceding that the French were "sometimes arrogant", quipped that they were arrogant "in the same way with the big and small countries".