Ahern in bid to repair stalled EU talks
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was urging European governments today to resume talks for a European constitution that collapsed last December in a dispute over voting rights.
In a report, Ahern, who is hosting the two-day European Union summit in Brussels, said his bilateral talks with EU leaders since January had revealed “a strong shared sense of the desirability of concluding negotiations as soon as possible”.
The leaders were expected to restart negotiations for a constitution and perhaps set a June deadline for concluding the talks, officials said.
They will also assess the EU’s economic performance.
Following the March 11 Madrid train bombings, which killed 190 people and injured more than 1,800, they will pledge to speed up the fight against terrorism. The attacks injected a new urgency into fortifying Europe’s security.
The leaders are to set a June 30 deadline to implement counter-terrorism measures. Some were adopted after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States but never universally enacted.
The constitutional negotiations collapsed in December when Spain and Poland blocked a deal on voting rights which they said would give too much power to the four biggest EU nations – Germany, Britain, France and Italy.
Ahern said the chances of a deal had improved. He did not elaborate, but a crucial aspect has been the March 14 election defeat of Spanish prime minister Jose-Maria Aznar’s conservative party by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a socialist, who is more conciliatory.
As a result, Polish prime minister Leszek Miller said this week he was ready to compromise.
The talks collapsed when Spain and Poland opposed a draft charter reducing their voting power in a union that will balloon from 15 to 25 members on May 1.
The constitution contains housekeeping reforms that effectively determine the power individual governments wield in EU policy and decision-making.
The draft constitution provides for decisions to be valid if half the EU states that represent at least 60% of the union’s population endorse a measure. This has not yet been agreed.
Also still in dispute is the size of the European Commission. The draft charter foresees each nation providing one commissioner, which would make for a top-heavy 25-member executive.
The draft constitution aims to make decision-making in an EU of 25 more efficient and aims to boost the EU’s role on the world stage by creating an EU president and foreign minister. It also proposes closer defence co-operation.
The leaders will also discuss ways to rein in public debt and overhaul health and pension plans – key steps aimed at boosting economic growth and creating jobs under an ambitious plan to make Europe the world’s most competitive economy by 2010.
Ahern has urged his counterparts to ”act decisively and in a spirit of solidarity” to tackle terrorism.
“The terrible acts in Madrid … are a chilling reminder that the threat posed by terrorism affects all of us and requires a common EU response,” he said in a letter to EU leaders.
The leaders are expected to agree to appoint an “anti-terrorism tsar” and study ways to streamline the sharing of information on threat groups. But they will stay away from establishing a European intelligence agency, based on the CIA, which Belgium and Austria have proposed.
