THE challenge of further enlargement of the EU makes reform of the union an "imperative", the President of the Commission, Mr Jacques Santer, said yesterday. He appealed to member states to give the union "the means to match its ambitions."
Mr Santer warned of "paralysis" unless the political will could be found to do so.
Evidence, however, that member states will share Mr Santer's desire to see a substantial leap forward at this year's treaty amending Inter Governmental Conference (IGC) is in short supply.
Mr Santer said majority voting should become standard practice in the EU, with few exceptions, and the union should be structured to allow members wanting to press ahead with further integration between themselves to do. But an a la carte Europe was completely out, he said.
Mr Santer was speaking at the presentation to the European Parliament of the Commission's ambitious finalised submission to the IGC, the details of which The Irish Times reported last week.
Ireland can take some comfort from the fact that the draft report has been amended to exclude a suggestion to end the automatic right of member states to a commissioner in the face of a rebellion from commissioners from the smaller member states.
But the report does suggest that the issue will have to be faced later and that the IGC should spell out how it can be done.
The report also dilutes proposals to give the Commission's President the right to pick commissioners from a list supplied by member states. It now proposes simply that the President should share the choice with member governments.
The Commission's submission calls for a major extension of majority voting throughout the union's operations, including, controversially, areas such as common foreign and security policy (CFSP) and justice and home affairs co operation.
In foreign policy, Mr Santer said, it was necessary to give "the Union the capacity to act rather than react". That would mean reinforcing the union's capacity to analyse and plan, and strengthening the "tandem" between Commission and presidency which steers foreign policy.
The Commission also sought to overcome the problems caused by foreign policy unanimity voting by urging the IGC to create the possibility of common actions being taken without the support of all members on the basis of what has been termed "constructive abstention" of non participants.
And the submissions calls for the incorporation of the Schengen Treaty on passport free travel and the Maastricht Social Protocol into the treaty. The report urges the eventual merger of the EU with the Western European Union in accordance, Mr Santer said, with a fixed timetable that should be agreed by the IGC. Mr Santer said that the creation of a European defence identity was "indispensable".
A spokeswoman for the Social Affairs Commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, said that he was pleased by the strong commitment of the Commission to seeing the Social Protocol, which allows the British opt out, brought fully back in to the treaty.
The commitment to social policy was also reflected in the inclusion of a chapter giving the Commission a greater role in Coordinating and encouraging job creation strategies.
