Europe's date with destiny

It's time for the cosy EU to bite the bullet, writes CATHERINE FIELD.

PARIS - The European Union heads this week for its stormiest summit in years, with a three-day meeting of 15 Government chiefs faced with sacrificing chunks of their nations' sovereignty to help admit countries from the former Soviet bloc.

France, the current EU president, is working frantically to prevent the summit, opening in Nice on Friday, from turning into a bare-knuckle fight.

"We must succeed in Nice," said President Jacques Chirac.

"If Nice can only produce a small agreement, it would be better purely and simply to acknowledge failure, which would be very serious for the future of Europe."

It is the most important EU gathering since the 1991 Maastricht summit which created the euro, and potentially a meeting to rank alongside the annus mirabilis of 1989 as a turning point in the continent's history.

The summit has to agree to painful reforms of the EU's decision-making structure to accommodate a dozen or more nations, most from central and eastern Europe, which are clamouring to join the prosperous 15-member club.

The EU has dragged its feet for years about admitting these poorer cousins. It is a shameful fact that more than 11 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the only Soviet Bloc land that has joined the EU has been the five states of the now-defunct East Germany - and they were admitted only because they had reunified with West Germany.

The result of this has been grim for Eastern Europe.

Some post-Communist Governments, lacking the spur of joining the world's biggest trade bloc, have delayed urgently needed economic reforms. And in fragile Balkan states, which need the EU's anchor, bloody ethnic friction has flared.

The time has finally come for the EU to bite the bullet. And a large-calibre round it is, too.

The most fractious issue is cutting back the right of veto at top EU decision-making meetings, in the Council of Ministers.

Under the present voting system, unanimity is required on a host of issues - but the EU could become paralysed if its membership virtually doubles over the next 20 years and this principle is unchanged.

The idea is to allow right of veto only for a tiny handful of issues at the core of national sovereignty. All the others would be decided by qualified majority, in which each state is allotted votes according to its size.

At present, there are of 87 votes in the Council of Ministers, with a majority requiring at least 62 votes.

The big question is, what sacrifices are countries prepared to make?

Each country has its own sacred cow: Britain has insisted on retaining its veto over, among other things, taxation, border control and defence; for Germany and Austria, it is immigration and asylum; for France, culture and trade; for Spain, regional aid; for Denmark, EU social regulations.

Fuelling the tension is Germany's lobbying for the council's votes to be redistributed in order to reflect its size. With a population of nearly 83 million, Germany has the same 10 votes as Britain, France and Italy, which each have a population of about 60 million. The Netherlands, which has 15 million people, and Portugal, with 10 million, each has five votes.

Germany's demand is opposed by France which, despite more than 55 years of peace with its neighbour, still fears the EU could tilt eastwards to Berlin. If Germany gets more votes, that would add to its clout with neighbouring Austria and its economic influence over poorer eastern European countries, according to this worried thinking.

Another contentious item on the Nice table is the allocation of seats in the European Commission, including plans to scrap the automatic right of small nations to a coveted slot on the EU executive.