EU Leaders Tough for Compromise at Nice Summit

European Union (EU) leaders are fighting for their national power in tough negotiations on Sunday, December 10, at the Nice summit to try their best in search for revamping the bloc's founding treaty before further enlargement.

The leaders from 15 EU member countries quarreled about all thorny issues mainly including the extension of qualified majority voting (QMV) to more policy areas in the Council of Ministers, the EU body of decision making, reweighting vote in the council and the future structure of the European Commission, the EU executive branch.

Now the Nice Summit, which was scheduled from Thursday to Saturday, has been postponed to at least Monday morning, according to news conference held by foreign ministers and government spokesmen at the summit.

So far, France, current EU rotating presidency, has put forward the final compromise proposal for discussion after the previous two met with strong opposition from its fellow members, especially the smaller nations. Portugal and Belgium were toughest among small countries who feel big powers' options may damage their national sovereignty.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Sunday in an interview with Eileen Fox news service that Britain's national interest is "making very good progress in these negotiations."

"We said we were going to come here to make sure that we protected our red lines on taxation and social security, we won that argument," Cook said, signaling Britain's blockade of QMV to the two areas.

The Nice Summit, the final meeting of the year-long proceedings of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on EU institutional reform, is crucial for the Union to implement its eastward expansion strategy in the near future. Its result will be the Treaty of Nice, a revised version of previous treaties on which the European bloc is founded.

The summit in Nice, the French Riviera city, is the longest one so far with the toughest issues in history of the bloc.

At present, the EU is faced with an historic enlargement process involving 13 candidate countries, including those in Central and Eastern Europe. The search for a larger Europe Union implies a new stage in redefining an European map.

Before the fresh wave of enlargement, the Union has to carry out radical reform of the way it is working in order to ensure its institutional and decision-making functioning.

Usually, each revision of EU founding Treaties is preceded by an IGC bringing together high-ranking representatives of all EU member states to discuss certain issues such as reform.

On changes of the EU Treaties, all EU governments must reach unanimous agreement. If leaders can not to agree on certain issues, they have to hand them over to next IGC for discussion.

The current IGC opened in February 2000 and was scheduled to complete its work in Nice.

Observers believe the Treaty of Nice, a result of EU members' efforts by giving in to so-called European harmonization, will certainly remove part of obstacles on the road to a larger Europe, no matter how much compromise the leaders have made.






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