European Union

Issues addressed at the Intergovernmental Conference in 2000

The decision to convene the Intergovernmental Conference was taken at the beginning of 1999 at a meeting of the European Council in Cologne only a month after the Treaty of Amsterdam had come into force. This means that the momentum of development had strengthened still further. Heads of state and governments at Cologne decided that this conference should take place in 2000 to deal with the issues that were unable to be resolved in Amsterdam. These were:

	the size and composition of the Commission;
	the weighting of votes in the Council;
	the possibility of extending the scope of decisions taken using qualified majority voting and, finally,
	other questions concerning treaty changes arising out of these so-called "leftovers" or out of the implementation of the Treaty of Amsterdam.
	In the middle of the year another issue arose out of deepening cooperation, that is, the opportunities offered by graduated integration.

The context against which the Intergovernmental Conference was set

What was achieved at the Intergovernmental Conference, what are the core provisions of the Treaty of Nice and what changes does it bring about? Let's take a more detailed look at the Treaty of Nice, after all it forms the current legal foundations of the EU.
As can be seen in Basic Course 5, discussions at the intergovernmental conference were set against ongoing accession negotiations with 12 other nations and were aimed at ensuring that the Union could still function with almost twice as many members by making changes to its institutions. The five points listed above formed the main focus of concern at the Conference.

Composition of the Commission

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Weighting of votes in the Council and qualified majority voting

Left-overs from the Amsterdam Treaty

The Treaty of Nice also provides for redistribution of the seats in the European Parliament, which, firstly, at least goes some way to moderating the imbalance of representation with regards to MPs from individual states and, secondly, limits the total number of MPs to 732 set against efforts to ensure that the Parliament can still work.


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Closer cooperation

Let us now turn to the last of the five core issues addressed at Nice, so-called closer cooperation. Results in this area can be summarized thus: While it may be true that the obstacles preventing closer cooperation will be considerably less in future and this will undoubtedly make it easier to overcome existing barriers in individual areas, it will not be possible, however, to apply these changes as an instrument for deepening and for opening up new policy areas. This is because the constraints to which they are subjected are too rigid across all three pillars.

Assessing the Treaty of Nice

That completes our summary of the changes ushered in with the Treaty of Nice. How should we categorize and evaluate the changes made in Nice set against the previous development of the EU, which we have already addressed. Here, one has to draw the conclusion that the conditions needed to initiate the enlargement process were only achieved if one looks at the surface and at a formal level. Scrach away at this surface, however, and the picture is very different indeed, revealing a situation in which the Treaty of Nice actually puts strain on the future of the Union.

Structural deficit: qualified majority voting makes things more difficult

One reason for this was disagreement between member states, which surpassed anything seen previously and involved states haggling about "national interests" in a way that had never been witnessed before. While this is bound to have considerable after-effects for the working atmosphere, it is also reflected in decisions taken at Nice which have left the EU burdened with a structural deficit. Just consider if you will the resolutions on the Commission, which are a long way behind the rules adopted at Amsterdam or the way in which decisions taken using qualified majority voting have been made more difficult.

Absence of the conditions needed for enlargement

What this also means - and I have to say that I agree with most observers on this - is that the Treaty of Nice fell a long way short of providing the kind of institutional and procedural changes needed to make sure that enlargement of the EU could take place smoothly and without problems.

The power of member states to block expanded

All in all, then, the overall impression of Nice is not of an opportunity taken to improve EU's ability to make decisions, but rather to expand the "blocking power" of individual member states. As far as our guiding question on the determining factors and development model of the integration process is concerned, this is a very important finding.

Consequence: New attempt at solving problems before enlargement

The deficiencies of the Treaty were so apparent that it was decided to make another attempt almost immediately (!) at solving the major problems facing the EU, before enlarging the EU to encompass Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC). We will go into this in more detail in the next chapter (Stage 7).