INTER-GOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE: EU LEADERS PUT CONSTITUTION ON ICE UNTIL MARCH.

• Position: European Union

The tactics chosen by Silvio Berlusconi, who banked everything on his personal relations with other EU leaders and his strong powers of persuasion, were still not enough to break the deadlock that was evident right from the very start of the formal IGC session in the afternoon of December 12. Dozens of bilateral and multilateral meetings, both with and without the Presidency, interrupted normal proceedings at the Brussels Summit, which never got into its stride, for want of any firm compromise proposals. Several different scenarios did the rounds but were never actually put on the negotiating table in writing. Mr Berlusconi publicly suggested two options that had already been raised in recent weeks: a decision confirming the switch-over to the double-majority voting system in November 2009 as envisaged in the European Convention's draft, plus a clause putting back to this date one last qualified majority vote to decide whether or not to keep on the vote-weighting system set by the Nice Treaty that Poland and Spain are so determined to hang on to; or to delay the double-majority system until 2014. Within this scenario, adjustments to the double-majority system were also suggested, such as raising the country threshold to 55% and the population threshold to 65%, or even 66%.

Although generally in favour of the new weighting system, European Commissioner Michel Barnier recalled that the EU executive had proposed to keep on the vote-weighting system as agreed albeit with a sharp cut in the threshold of support needed to secure a qualified majority. Mr Berlusconi said there were some signs of Spain and Poland moving, but "the positions were so far apart they didn't allow for any hope of agreement". But according to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, it was Madrid and Warsaw "who wouldn't, or couldn't, change their position". Germany had nevertheless appeared tempted by the compromise at one moment, when it agreed to raising the population threshold, something which of course would not affect its own interests, given its demographic size. But France was particularly inflexible not just on the double majority principle but also on the thresholds mentioned in the text of the draft Convention, that is, a majority allowing a vote to be passed when it has the support of half the Member States representing 60% of the population.

But even though the debate focused mainly on the actual decision-making process in the Council of Ministers, the old humbug...