The European Commission yesterday gave its broad backing to a radical report on reform of the EU treaties produced by a group of "wise men" under the former Belgian prime minister, Mr JeanLuc Dehaene, writes Patrick Smyth. The report, commissioned by the Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, as a response to the danger of decision-making gridlock following enlargement, proposed a major extension of majority voting and a simplification of the flexibility provisions of the treaty.
It also suggested making the future reform of the treaties dramatically easier by dividing the treaties between core constitutional elements, amendable only by unanimity and a full InterGovernmental Conference, and other policy elements of the treaties, which would be amendable simply by summits.
The French Commissioner for Institutional Reform, Mr Michel Barnier, the author of yesterday's Commission response to Mr Dehaene, admitted that such a move would be extremely complex as the intention was to preserve the "acquis", the body of rights and competences already established over the years.
"If we rewrite the treaty we are in danger of going backwards. So we have no intention of rewriting, but simplifying," he said.
Speaking to the European Parliament following the Commission decision, Mr Prodi warned those MEPs and member states who imagined that next year's Inter-Governmental Conference could be limited in scope: "I see nothing but risks and dangers in toying with the illusion that major reform can wait until a later conference."
Not only would the process not get any easier, he said, but "we have already had 15 years of treaty reviews and I see no attraction in the idea of holding yet another conference after the forthcoming IGC." Nor would the public.
The Commission paper suggests four broad areas where voting should move to qualified majority voting - all areas where the Parliament currently enjoys co-decision with the Council of Ministers, the policy fields associated with the Tampere summit initiatives on justice and home affairs, all matters of external trade representation, and elements of taxation "necessary to the good functioning of the internal market".
But a note of warning was sounded by the veteran Danish eurosceptic, Mr Jens Peter Bonde, who said that what Mr Prodi was urging smacked of federalism and represented an erosion of the rights of national parliaments to vet amendments to the treaty.