REPRESENTATIVES of the 15 EU member states will shortly begin discussing the wording of possible amendments of the EU treaties, after "good progress" was made in Cork at a meeting of the Union's Inter Governmental conference (IGC).
The informal meeting of the IGC at the weekend, the first of the Irish presidency, agreed a timetable and agenda for discussions up to the end of September. The representatives also had substantive discussions on some of the most sensitive issues facing the EU, including proposals for a greater EU role in security and defence matters.
A special EU summit will take place in October in or near Dublin to try to give further political impetus to the IGC's deliberations. The IGC began last March and has the job of agreeing revisions of the EU treaties to make the Union's procedures simpler in advance of the proposed enlargement. Final agreement is expected next year, following which changes must be ratified by national parliaments and in some cases, including Ireland's, by referendum.
The Florence European summit last month asked the Irish presidency to produce a general outline for a draft revision of the EU treaties in time for next December's meeting in Dublin.
It was expected the Government would concentrate on issues on which agreement was likely during the next six months, and leave the more difficult issues for consideration during the Dutch EU Presidency, which begins next January.
But at the weekend, representatives of the member states are understood to have discussed issues on which there is profound disagreement, as well as less contentious ones.
For example, they had substantial talks on the development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. They are also understood to have made progress on the issue of "flexibility", which allows some member states to proceed towards European integration faster than others.
According to one source, the Government hopes to have agreement on much of the text of draft new EU treaties by next December. In areas where there is no agreement, it hopes to be able to propose a number of alternative texts, rather than simply say there is no agreement.
The representatives of the member states also attempted to identify possible treaty changes which would be most difficult to "sell" to their own parliaments or electorates. The new EU treaties which eventually emerge from the IGC will have to be ratified by the parliaments of each member state and in some cases by referendum as well.
By identifying "unsalable" proposals early on, the IGC hopes to avoid difficult ratification problems, such as those that surrounded the Maastricht Treaty, in which the treaty was almost rejected by the people of Denmark and France.
In neutral or non-aligned states such as Ireland, proposals to merge the EU with the European defence organisation, the Western European Union, would arouse strong opposition. Such a proposal is highly unlikely to be agreed at this IGC because of the level of opposition.
While a full merger appears to have been ruled out at this stage, there was a discussion at the weekend on Finnish and Swedish proposals that WEU peacekeeping and humanitarian missions the so called Petersberg tasks should be brought within the EU treaty.
Irish participation in such tasks, on a case by case basis, was suggested in the White Paper on Foreign policy published earlier this year. But even the inclusion of such limited WEU missions within the competence of the EU would be likely to provoke a lively campaign in Ireland against the proposed treaty revisions.
Representatives from many member states are understood to have supported the inclusion of a section on unemployment in the proposed new EU treaties, to show that the Union is concerned about issues which concern the public.
The meeting also discussed Europe's human rights regime, and possible methods of rationalising the situation whereby there is an EU institution (the Court of Justice) which sits in Luxembourg and a Council of Europe Institution (the Court of Human Rights) which sits in Strasbourg.