Ireland seems afraid of `mission creep' in IGC process

The struggle for consensus, sad to say, is not necessarily compatible with that for clarity or simplicity.

With 10 days to go to the Nice summit the negotiators in the treaty changing Inter-Governmental Conference are now working with draft treaty texts and papers refining options that would test the minds of a Nobel Prize winner. The treaty that emerges, I can confidently predict, will be at least as unreadable to the man in the street as its predecessor from Amsterdam. And that is saying something.

And so the elegance of the Swedish model is a real joy to those sad souls who have had to plunge into the morass. This model is a formula for re-weighting the votes of member states in the Council of Ministers which is based on a multiple of the square root of population.

Of the five options now still on the table is the only one whose rationale can be explained at less than dissertation length.

But elegance is not the point, and the Swedes look unlikely to prevail.

In the less mathematical parts of the treaty complexity and unreadability is a function of the search for agreement.

Take the taxation issue. Although a majority of member states would clearly like to extend majority voting to questions such as corporate tax harmonisation, four or five, with Ireland and the UK to their fore, have insisted this is a non-starter.

Because unanimity is required to change the treaty the French Presidency, a champion of this cause, then has the choice either to browbeat small countries into submission, to throw in the towel on the issue, or to hedge the tax proposal with qualifications and qualifications of qualifications.

The preferred course might be Option One but in this case it is barred because the Brits will not wear it. Concession on this issue would be enough to lose Mr Blair the next election.

So, with Paris determined to claim after the summit to have rolled back the veto in as many policy areas as possible, we are into Option Three and a draft that limits majority voting to VAT and excise duty rates and to measures to avoid double taxation and to support the fight against fraud. Mind you, Dublin is still saying "Non", but I predict some movement at the twelfth hour, other concerns having been met.

And apart from its defence of its right to a commissioner, Ireland is also digging its heels in on another aspect of the treaty reform, although the rationale here is less understandable.

Having now accepted that the new treaty should provide easier opportunities for groups of member states to work together on common projects which others do not yet want to join, so-called "enhanced co-operation" or "flexibility", Ireland is, however, trying to block the same provisions from applying in the fields of foreign policy and security and defence co-operation.

Presidency draft text provides for the possibility of such limited groups in this field for "implementation of a joint action or a common position" and "initiatives in the field of security and defence contributing to the acquisition of crisis management capabilities".

The proposals in effect distinguish between external actions, such as a peacekeeping mission to Rwanda, and internal co-operation, such as the joint commissioning of heavy-lift aircraft, and provide slightly different procedures for approval and requirements for minimum numbers involved.

That this area should be of concern to Ireland is hardly surprising given our sensitivity back home on the "N" word, but the Government assured the public during the Amsterdam referendum that any actions undertaken by the EU in the military field are completely circumscribed by the treaty and limited to peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in conformity with agreed EU policy.

And that fundamental reality is not threatened in the slightest by enhanced co-operation. So what's the problem? Irish prevarication on the issue seems to suggest fears that the EU as a whole will lose control and that "mission creep", to use an Americanism, might embroil us remorselessly, politically at least, in more than we bargained for.

Yet what is the alternative? Unable to convince all their partners to participate in a peacekeeping mission, and thus unable to carry it out in the framework of the EU, some member states may decide to go it alone in what have been known as "coalitions of the willing". Then the ground rules would be of their own making.

Surely, supporters of enhanced co-operation argue, it would be in the interests of small neutral states like Ireland to ensure that such missions should indeed be organised in an EU framework, in conformity with EU policy, subject to those very treaty constraints which the Irish Government has praised?

Having accepted the logic that Europe may need to do what the US may no longer be willing to do, surely it makes the same sense to facilitate within the EU missions what we support politically but are unwilling or unable to contribute to? Why the doubts? Unless, of course, Amsterdam's Treaty is not quite as watertight as we were told. . .