By Martin Banks - 19th June 2007
Parliament’s political group leaders have set out a ‘wish list’ of demands ahead of this week’s key EU summit.
As leaders from 27 EU countries prepare for what many predict could be tortuous talks over the stalled EU treaty, each of the assembly's five main groups spelled out their hopes and fears.
For Joseph Daul, leader of the EPP-ED, parliament's biggest group, the summit must settle once and for all “the question of the future arrangement of EU institutions.”
“Whether you call it a simplified or fundamental treaty, or something else, the outline must be agreed on at the summit and the text must be ratified by member states prior to the 2009 European elections,” said the French deputy.
“The treaty must be ambitious while maintaining principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.”
German Martin Schulz, leader of the Socialist group, said he remains “hopeful” that a compromise will be found.
“The prize for success will be great but the price of failure will be heavy to bear,” he said.
In a reference to the Polish threat to use its veto in a row over EU voting rights, he said, “I urge all EU leaders to show solidarity.
“The Polish government should realise that the EU has shown great solidarity with Poland up to now. Poland risks isolation in Europe and failure to reach agreement would harm Poland and Europe’s interests in the long term.”
ALDE leader Graham Watson said that while German chancellor Angela Merkel may be the only woman around the table at the summit “she has shown more courage than many of her peers” in making the issue of resolving the treaty crisis a presidency priority.
“In doing so, she has shown the kind of leadership that Europe has so far lacked and set the scene for an IGC later in the year which will, if successful, resolve the bickering and bad blood that has poisoned the political debate in Europe since the French and Dutch rejected the draft treaty two years ago.”
MEP Monica Frassoni, co-leader of the Green group, asserts that the “main risk” this week is that the summit will agree an outcome that falls far short of the contents of the treaty.
“All the years of intense work and difficult negotiations to make Europe more democratic, transparent and effective would be lost. The huge challenges for Europe, which the Nice treaty failed to resolve, would continue to remain unanswered,” she said.
British eurosceptic deputy Nigel Farage, joint leader of the Independence/Democracy group, said, “I hope the exercise will be transparent and that the peoples of Europe will be allowed to vote on the outcome of the summit.
“I fear that I am too optimistic about the elite and suspect that they have no interest in the views of those they purport to govern.”
Elsewhere, German Socialist MEP Jo Leinen, a constitutional expert, urged the summit not to “untie” the package of reforms contained in the stalled treaty and not to accept “horse-trading or weak compromises.”
UK Liberal Andrew Duff, a member of the convention which drafted the treaty, reassured UK premier Tony Blair that none of his four ‘red lines’ were “real ones”.
“Blair will remember how the draft treaty, which he signed, specifically precluded intrusions upon UK legal and political space.”
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