A CONFERENCE on rural women in Ireland is likely to be cancelled as a result of a European Court of Justice ruling.
Britain and Germany yesterday won the ruling which will force the EU Commission to suspend its funding of projects for the elderly and in the field of social exclusion.
Expressing disappointment, the Commissioner for Social Affairs, Mr Padraig Flynn, said the Commission would respect the interim ruling, and hoped the court would rule urgently on the substantive issue.
Unless the court sees the issue as one of urgency, it could be 1998 before he gets a definitive ruling.
Mr Flynn said the decision underlined the Commission's case for a treaty amendment in the Inter Governmental Conference to copper fasten decision making in social policy.
A Commission source said the decision would almost certainly mean that an Irish presidency conference in Dublin on social exclusion and rural women will have to be cancelled.
Nine Irish projects were awarded £535,000 under the social exclusion heading this year. They included a Dublin project on reintegrating female drug users into the community a Dublin support programme for users' families a child development project in Galway and a cultural centre for refugees.
Of the 630 projects seeking support for next year, 20 are Irish. The Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise and Employment, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald, said the European Court of Justice decision would come as a blow to local communities which regarded the projects as very important.
A senior official in Brussels suggested that the ruling might turn out to be a blessing as it could force member states to confront a problem they might have wished to sidestep.
Mr Flynn also said he hoped member states would also accept other decisions of the court, a clear reference to the ruling expected next month on the working hours directive.
Britain is expected to lose its case that the directive is more than a health and safety issue and thus enacted under the wrong treaty provision.
Although the Commission has failed to win ministerial approval for its Fourth Anti Poverty Programme and its programme for the elderly it had been spending money on some small, related projects and had invited tenders for £4 million in projects associated with social exclusion.
Britain and Germany sought a ruling from the Luxembourg based court that the Commission was, in effect, subverting the budget process by making such grants, however small.
They also sought an interim injunction to block such payments until it rules on the substantive issue.
Yesterday the court said it would not grant an injunction to prevent the Commission from committing itself to projects, but no payment may be made before the final ruling.
Commission sources say the effect is the same as a full injunction and that they will be forced to close down the budget lines as groups cannot realistically be expected to plan expenditure on such a conditional basis.
Most of the funding aimed at helping work with the elderly had been aimed at conferences bringing practitioners together to discuss best practice, like a recent meeting on housing needs in The Hague.
Among the many projects previously funded in social exclusion was one to help pass on the experience of the British magazine The Big Issue.
