Blair win sets debate on EU fundamentals

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair may have lost a lot of friends during the ill-tempered negotiations on the EU budget this weekend, but he got his way.

For now Britain will continue to get back a third of the money it pays to the EU budget, of which 30% comes from France, 2.1% from Ireland and 10% from the poorest new member states.

Almost half the budget will continue going to agriculture and the French, with a quarter of their land producing food, will get over 10% of it. The vast majority of the funds - 80% - goes to big landowners like the British royal family and to multi-national food processors like Nestlé and Tate and Lyle.

Put like this, it does not make much sense. And that is Mr Blair’s point.

He is not much interested in tweaking the Common Agriculture Policy. He is continuing his crusade to reshape Europe.

His intransigence at the summit has almost certainly forced a discussion of what kind of Europe there should be in the future.

Mr Blair has a clear view of what the EU should do, but while most others oppose him they are unable to agree on what they do want.

The man who chaired the 15 hours of negotiations, Jean-Claude Juncker, summed it all up in the early hours of Saturday morning.

“During this budgetary debate there were two conceptions of Europe that clashed and will always clash. There are those who, in fact without saying it, want the big market and nothing but the big market - a high level free-trade zone - and those that want a politically integrated Europe.”

He added, “I have felt for a long time this debate would blow up one day.”

The constitution, with its 18 months of debate by politicians from every national parliament in Europe, was supposed to put this debate to bed.

Instead it muddied the waters even further and like the proposed budget for the next eight years, left open what it could not resolve and promised a little of what everyone fancied.

The European project is still in development. People are unclear as to what they want or how to achieve it. Few want a Europe based on the US model. All want to retain their sovereignty but co-operate. But the structures and even the concepts for this kind of association have not been developed yet.

But ready or not, Mr Blair wants decisions made now. With Britain taking over the EU presidency on July 1 he could get his way.

The man who will have to broker a new budget in 2006, the Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel, had no illusions about what the British want.

“The British want a different Europe. They want more a market-oriented Europe, a large market, but no deeper union.”

Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder believes the Anglo-Saxon model would mean countries would not act for the common good - a basic tenet of the union.

Britain pushed harder than any other for enlargement, partly because they and the US saw it as a way of guaranteeing Europe’s stability and partly because the new economies have been developing on strong market-orientated lines.

But this solidarity was not in evidence during Friday’s negotiations. The Polish Prime Minister, Marek Belka, offered on behalf of the other new member states to sacrifice some of their EU aid to help the British and Dutch demands.

“My proposal was a reaction to what I perceived as the selfishness of some member states. I asked, is it all about money, if so how much?”

However this had little effect on Tony Blair in Brussels on Friday night and led only to verbal brawling.

Afterwards Mr Juncker was uncharacteristically bitter, refusing to wish Mr Blair well when he takes over from him in less than two weeks. “No comment. No opinion. No advice”, he said, and later added, “My enthusiasm for Europe is crushed.”