The European Union's Inter Governmental Conference to review the Maastricht Treaty is beginning to clarify its agenda and agree a timetable for negotiations. The conference was inaugurated at the Turin European Council in March. Three broad categories of subject matter have been identified by the Italian EU presidency: citizenship and human rights, the Union's institutions, and external action on foreign policy, security and defence. This agenda setting is very useful, although preliminary. The real negotiations will be conducted under Ireland's EU presidency from July to December.
This is the first time Ireland has had the responsibility of combining the onerous task of chairing an IGC while also conducting an EU presidency. The four previous occasions this State has had the job have built up useful experience about how to manage affairs by careful preparation of agendas and documents, brokering compromises and responding to the unexpected. In 1990 the great drama of German unification dominated the agenda. In 1996 Germany is still centre stage in the EU, as Chancellor Kohl and his government seek a political regime within the EU capable of convincing the electorate that Germany should enter the monetary union he has so passionately advocated.
There will be a tricky and difficult - perhaps an impossible - diplomatic task involved in accommodating powerful German aspirations for the IGC, with those of a minimalist British Conservative government which is embroiled in an increasingly passionate and visceral argument about the whole principle of EU membership. Ireland has a privileged knowledge of Britain as a negotiating partner which will be deepened even further by the Northern talks beginning on June 10th; but without a British willingness to negotiate constructively in the IGC there is a clear limit on any presidency's capacity to mediate on such deep disagreements.
The way around this problem is seen increasingly to lie in a flexibility clause which would allow states that are able and willing to integrate faster than those with less capacity or greater reluctance, as long as common objectives and a single institutional framework are preserved. Many states, Ireland included, will be very cautious about such a model, despite the precedents for multi speeds built into the EU's existing treaties and practice, for fear of creating a two tier structure. But there is probably no alternative, given the differences of commitment and capacity within the existing 15 member states, not to mention the 12 that are interested in joining, in anticipation of which this IGC was called. From Ireland's point of view there is the additional difficulty of whether to join the emergent security and defence arrangements that are regarded as core tasks by most other states, even if, as now seems likely, they will not be finally determined in this IGC.
Other member states will expect the Irish EU presidency to take important political decisions and initiatives on these matters. On citizenship and human rights it is imperative that the process be brought closer to an EU public that is often sceptical about a process which seems beyond their democratic control, even as it deals with issues, such as employment, that are central to public concern. This State has a crucial interest in preserving the balance between and access to the EU's institutions, but has to act in a disinterested manner as chair of the IGC. External action will tend to be dominated by events in Russia and Bosnia.
All in all, the presidency and the IGC are the most demanding and complex international assignments to have faced an Irish government.