European solidarity wins the day at Turin summit

Date: 04/04/1996

The Intergovernmental Conference was formally launched last week under a dark cloud cast by the BSE crisis. However, as Rory Watson reports, the furore offers EU governments a salutary lesson as they prepare to negotiate the future shape and direction of the Union.

UNTIL a fortnight ago, not even the most imaginative author could have written a script in which the future of the EU would take second place to public health scares about an outbreak of mad cow disease.

But that is precisely what happened at the one-day Turin summit which last week fired the starter's gun on the Intergovernmental Conference. Complex formulae for improving the Union's internal and external efficiency were forced to take a back seat as political and media attention concentrated on the world-wide ban imposed on British beef exports.

All the half dozen or so questions directed at UK Prime Minister John Major during his post-summit press conference focused on his problems over bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), even though he is known to have an EU agenda which is noticeably different to that of his continental colleagues.

The Italian hosts had set the tone by putting veal on the lunchtime menu. Participants later vied with each other to stress how much they had enjoyed their meal as they tried to reassure the public and boost confidence in one of the Union's most visible industries.

Almost without exception, they attacked the media for whipping up the current hysteria.

But the intrusion of BSE into the IGC launching ceremony could yet have a significant bearing on the future of the Union.

The starting point for the negotiations to revise the EU's treaties is that the whole venture must be brought closer to citizens and must tackle issues of direct interest to individuals.

Few subjects are closer to people's daily concerns than food in general, and beef in particular. If the Union can convince the public that it has put in place effective measures to guarantee their health, then it will go part of the way to bridging the credibility gap.

Secondly, concerns over beef enabled EU leaders to portray a public image of solidarity as they rallied around the UK in its hour of need and paid scant attention to the many differing solutions on the table to improve the workings of the EU.

French President Jacques Chirac spoke for many when he said afterwards that he was disappointed that the lunchtime discussion on the beef industry had not been transmitted to a wider audience, since it would have demonstrated the Union's capacity for solidarity.

But there may well be a hidden agenda behind this display of togetherness which will only come to light as the IGC unfolds.

Some leaders are undoubtedly hoping that the whole incident will, if not soften the harder edges of UK Euroscepticism, at least demonstrate the advantages of Union membership and possibly make it more difficult for Major to take an obdurate stand in the negotiations.

That sentiment was summed up by Belgian Premier Jean-Luc Dehaene when he declared pointedly: “If European solidarity can be shown on this problem, it can also show even those who do not believe in it that it can be of some use.”

Major was not prepared to rise to the bait last Friday when he insisted that the British government's views on the Common Agricultural Policy and the IGC remained unaffected by this gesture of solidarity.

It is a measure of the drafting skill of EU diplomats, coordinated by the Italian presidency, that the mandate for the IGC was endorsed with so few difficulties in Turin. Only the Danes and the Greeks had minor quibbles with the text penned on the eve of the summit.

The first successfully argued for strengthening the EU's commitment to protecting the environment and ensuring sustainable development. The second, with more than one eye on Turkey, managed to insert a pledge of “mutual solidarity” and ensure the mandate acknowledged that “a strengthened control of the Union's external frontiers” would contribute to ensuring adequate protection for EU citizens.

The mandate aims to set the negotiators clear signposts for their work, but specifically leaves the door open for issues not so far mentioned to be placed on the table. The neutral language used also gives scope for differing interpretations of the tasks ahead.

The UK, however, appears alone in assuming that the remit to “examine whether and how to improve the role and functioning of the European Court of Justice” means setting new limits on the powers of the Luxembourg-based judges.

The Italians also successfully managed to pour oil on the troubled waters of the European Parliament's involvement in the IGC. The agreed formula, with its commitment to brief MEPs, listen to their views and provide them with official documentation, does not go as far as many would like. But it goes considerably further than the bimonthly information sessions for a dozen MEPs which occured during the Maastricht negotiations.

The flexibility built into this formula gives the pro-Parliament countries which will hold the EU presidency during the IGC negotiations - Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands and, possibly, Luxembourg - considerable scope to ensure parliamentary input into the negotiations.

The Parliament's President Klaus Hänsch acknowledged the progress made, saying: “One cannot overestimate the fact that the Parliament is officially involved at every stage of the IGC. That did not happen when Maastricht was negotiated. All in all, this is a big step forward.”

There could have been few more appropriate venues than Turin's Lingotto for the IGC launching ceremony as the Union tries to build on the strengths of the past and look to the future.

After starting out life in 1920 as the first major Fiat factory, the massive complex has retained its outside trappings but has been completely transformed inside into a modern conference centre.

Whether the Union can make such a smooth transition remains to be seen, but the formal IGC inaugural session has already given an insight into potential tactics.

An understanding appears to be emerging among Nordic participants which could see Denmark championing the cause of the environment, Sweden leading the case for effective employment policies and Finland arguing for greater openness in the IGC negotiations.

Scarcely more than a whisper six months ago, employment has now firmly established itself on the IGC agenda, with almost every government accepting that it must be given a prominent place in the new treaty.

But Commission President Jacques Santer's argument for a confidence pact for employment has begun to be supplanted at the centre of the debate by the more philosophical and less detailed French plan for a European social model.

Santer's campaign to back his strategy with up to 2 billion ecu of extra spending on Trans-European Networks and other job creation schemes over the next three years has been dented by the budgetary uncertainty over the cost of repairing the damage caused by the current outbreak of mad cow disease.

Instead, governments are focusing on French efforts to build a stronger social vision for Europe, tackling unemployment and introducing measures to prevent up to 50 million people from being excluded from society.

The broad brush nature of the leaders' discussion on such a slippery subject prompted German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to suggest a separate informal summit meeting during the Irish presidency specifically dedicated to Europe's social vision.

Despite initial Irish reservations, the idea backed by Kohl and Chirac is likely to be taken up.

For EU leaders, it will provide another opportunity to repeat the relaxing formula devised for the informal summit in Mallorca last year.

It will also provide them with an alibi against charges of inactivity in fighting unemployment if the IGC negotiations become entangled in technical institutional detail this autumn.