EU: The Government will take over leadership of the attempt to agree a new EU constitutional treaty in just two weeks' time, amid concern that divisions which blocked agreement this weekend will not be resolved in the short term. Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent, reports.
After the weekend Brussels summit broke up without agreement the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said the Irish EU presidency would now prepare a report for the next European Council in March on the prospects for progress. He did not rule out the possibility of the treaty being agreed during Ireland's six-month presidency, but expressed no optimism that this would happen.
He said the failure to reach agreement this weekend was due in part to the position the Polish government had taken at home, and also the fact that the Spanish government was facing into an election in March and therefore not in a position to compromise on an issue seen to be of national importance.
"In no way do I think it was the fault of the presidency. It was the position of the governments and they were not in the position to make the necessary compromises today."
Spain and Poland are resisting French and German proposals to replace the complicated system of weighted votes agreed at Nice three years ago with a simpler system based on population. Under the proposed new system, called a double majority, a measure could be approved if supported by a majority of member-states representing 60 per cent of the EU population.
Under the deal agreed at Nice, however, Poland and Spain have a disproportionately larger number of votes than would be merited by the size of their populations.
The Taoiseach said the European Council had now asked Ireland to engage in new consultations, and on the basis of those consultations to make an assessment of the prospects for progress and to report to the European Council in March.
"I do not sense that people will be waiting on January 1st to get back into a formal session of the IGC. That is not the position. It is going to take some time, more debate, and more consideration. There will not another IGC conference called to complete it in the next number of months. That would be my assessment today.
"If I at any time over the next six months believe the atmosphere would present the occasion to finalise it, I would move to it. The answer today is that that atmosphere is not there. The agreement will come when people have reflected on it and when people can see they can resolve the outstanding areas."
He said that while agreement during the Irish presidency was "not impossible", the March elections in Spain and European Parliament elections in June would make it difficult. "It is not impossible that this will be concluded, but the view of the meeting today was that it was unlikely, but we will see. I don't quite frankly think that before March there will be an agreement. There will be a period of assessment. To try to call it now would be top of the head stuff."
Mr Ahern said the fact that the treaty negotiations were unresolved would involve more work for the Irish presidency. There was already a large range of issues including the Lisbon strategy (concerning improving the EU's economic competitiveness), external relations and economic issues as well as the enlargement of the Union on May 1st. "We won't be looking for work for the next six months."
He said the failure to reach agreement was not disastrous. "We have to have a sense of proportion. The Union has overcome difficulties in the past. A lot of good work has been done in these last few months, and in the two years of the convention. From an Irish point of view, many points that have been of concern to us have been dealt with." This included the issue of defence, which he said had been resolved to Ireland's satisfaction. However, the issue over the push from some member-states including France to end the national veto in some limited areas relating to taxation - a proposal strongly resisted by Ireland and Britain - has not yet been resolved.
"The assessment in there is that what we tried to do was maybe too much, too fast, it required more time, it required that we think out some of the issues more fully, and no more than that. There was no sense of abandonment of the process or bitterness, and all delegates said there was absolutely no recrimination and not one word of recrimination was spoken in there."