"Fischer warns of constitution power struggle" - Interview with Foreign Minister Fischer in the "Financial Times"

Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, has warned Poland and Spain that they risk splitting the European Union unless they back down in the power struggle over the new EU constitution.

Mr. Fischer warned that the constitution, due to be finalized next week, would be a failure unless member states agreed a new voting system, giving big countries such as Germany more power.

Mr. Fischer believes the "double majority" voting system, opposed by smaller countries such as Spain and Poland, is vital to stop the EU decision-making process from seizing up.

He warned that if other member states tried to slow down the process of EU integration, "avant garde" countries such as France and Germany would press ahead regardless.

In an interview with the Financial Times, he said: "We will have the opposite of what we want: namely a multi-speed EU, where cracks will appear."

The proposed new voting system for the Council of Ministers aims to allow an enlarged EU of 25 to function smoothly. Decisions could be taken by 50 per cent of member states representing at least 60 per cent of the population.

The system gives more clout to the EU's biggest countries, especially Germany, and reduces the influence of countries such as Spain and Poland.

Both countries are threatening to fight to the end of next week's treaty negotiations to safeguard the power they won in the 2001 Nice Treaty, which gives them almost as many votes as bigger countries such as Germany, Britain and France.

A confrontation would come as Germany, once the archetypal "good European", is facing strident criticism of its European policy. Long a champion of strong institutions, it humiliated the European Commission last week by refusing to abide by recommendations urging it to rein in fiscal spending.

The chances of a compromise on the constitutional treaty appeared to brighten at last weekend's meeting of foreign ministers in Naples, where the Italian EU presidency showed willingness to accommodate the demands of Madrid and Warsaw over future voting weight in the Council of Ministers.

Yet in an interview with the Financial Times, Mr. Fischer said any softening on this point would mean "the intergovernmental conference had failed to fulfill key objectives".

"To look for a compromise that diverges from the double majority means to fall back on Nice," he said. "[Nice] is a bad treaty, an insufficient treaty, and we would have to pay a heavy price for this."

He also criticized the proposal by smaller countries that each government should keep appointing at least one European commissioner, making it much larger than foreseen in the constitution.

"That would not mean more efficiency but more bureaucracy."

Mr. Fischer denied that last week's de facto suspension of the stability pact, the political contract that guarantees fiscal discipline in the EU, had complicated the talks on t he constitution.

But he hinted that the Commission's insistence on budget cuts could have an impact on next year's negotiations on the EU budget for the period beyond 2007.

Germany is the biggest net financial contributor to the EU.

Financial Times interview, Dec. 3, 2003

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