The European Union summit meeting at Nice should be a gathering which will live on as one of the EU milestones. It will mark the end of the six month term of the French Presidency, and should focus on shaping the EU for a future of many more members. The enlargement from 15 member states to possibly as many as 28 requires some bold changes to the way the EU runs itself. However the necessary changes will cause domestic political difficulties for many of the national leaders, who gather in the South of France. For once, it is not the UK which will be the only country tobe in trouble.
If a larger Union is to be able to work, the Commission cannot just grow and grow. It is already unwieldy with 20 commissioners. Every country has at least one post, and the big five (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) have two each. The small countries are reluctant to lose these important posts, while the five are reluctant to demoted to an equal footing with the smaller states. The tabloids will be waiting to tell publics that the loss of a commissioner is a loss of influence. An offset might be made by adjusting the weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers to ensure that big states are not swamped by smaller. The current arrangement, where the smallest state, Luxembourg, has two votes and the four largest countries (France, Germany and Italy) have ten votes will need refining if the prospective new members are not to be given undue influence.
It looks as though the votes will be trebled to allow a more discriminating range of vote allocation. It will also allow all leaders (or their spin doctors) to claim that they have increased their votes. There is a move to tie the new votes more closely to the population of each country. This would give Germany more votes than any other state. This is a very deep psychological problem for France. It is also easy to imagine how the Sun headline writers would react to such a move. Some Germans are now beginning to realise that such a direct connection between voting power and population size may not be in their long term interest. Germany's population is set to decline, and Turkey is a prospective member in the longer term. Germany might regret setting the rules so that Turkey ends up as the most powerful country in the EU of 2050.
Even if the weighting of the votes is settled, the way that they are used remains an issue. Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) would allow Europe to work better at adapting to the new challenges of a larger region. Italy is enthusiastic for making most decisions open to QMV. France has proposed a number of issues which would move from needing consensus to being decided by QMV. The UK will not agree to losing its veto on taxation and social security changes. Germany has difficulties with immigration policies. France worries about cultural issues. There is little chance of a bold move on QMV, but the papers will hype up every concession into a major political disaster.
If these big problems are not enough to keep the leaders (or their officials) up late into the night, then the obscure concept of Enhanced Co-operation and the Charter of Fundamental Rights will. The first is seen by some as a way to allow the more enthusiastic EU members to make more rapid process in particular fields. This already happens unofficially: the group of 12 who have adopted the Euro are one such subset. The UK would be very unhappy if they achieved formal treaty status. The Charter of Rights is another problem for Tony Blair as it might extend the range of law from the EU to a politically uncomfortable extent. At least he will be able to take comfort from the fact that European defence proposals have now got a majority of the British public supporting them.
The outcome of this overfull agenda is inevitably going to be a fudge. Decisions, which can be put off, will be put off. Difficult restructuring of the EU will have to wait for another day. What may be needed is some thought about the need for an Inter-Governmental Conference to sort it out before the new members come in. The agenda for such a conference, in perhaps 2004, will need formulation soon. Nice may be the time to start thinking about it.