Brussels, 20/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - Another member of the Vimont Group that is preparing the Intergovernmental Conference on institutional reform, the Dutch Permanent Representative, Bernard R. Bot, speaking to the European Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs this week, referred to his country's openness, in the IGC, towards qualified majority voting in Council. We can accept qualified majority voting in 42 of the 45 cases presented to us by the French Presidency, he said, while acknowledging difficulties for the Netherlands regarding tax, social security and asylum (At the Biarritz Summit, Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato had said that his Dutch counterpart, Wim Kok, had considered that the extension of qualified majority voting was doubtless a more important issue for the future of Europe than the size of the Commission or the weighting of votes in Council: Ed.). The Netherlands is in principle in favour of extending co-decision there where the Council votes through a qualified majority, but making a distinction between legislative and provisions, Ambassador Bot further pointed out.
In these negotiations, enhanced cooperation is a priority for the Netherlands (like for the other Benelux countries: Ed.), said Bot, while stressing that the aim was not to create a "hard core". …/..
The Netherlands is not in favour of the abolition of the veto and considers that 8 Member State should suffice to engage in enhanced cooperation (but it could also agree to a one-third of Member States formula, as long as the enlarged Union does not exceed a certain number of members). In his intervention, Mr. Bot recalled the major outlines of the ambitious Benelux Memorandum for the IGC, and on several occasions pointed to his country's preference for "one Commissioner per Member State", noting that it would be difficult, for example, to tell new EU member States that they would not have a Commissioner..On another problem that, in Biarritz, the "large" and "small" countries saw themselves confronting each other - the majority in Council - Mr. Bot said that the Netherlands preferred a re-weighting of votes, as it believes the double majority system to be more complicated. Rejecting the "large/small" opposition, Bernard Bot said that, in Europe's history, there had never been compact blocks of large States against small one ones, but moving coalitions, and that a balance had to be found preventing the large ones alone being able to block the small, as well as preventing countries representing a small percentage of the EU's population being able alone to muster up such an ability to block.
Asked about the Charter of Fundamental Rights, Bot considered that it was a good political document, but that, as worded, could not be incorporated into the Treaty, as it is not precise enough legally-speaking. What have we to tell the legal experts who, within the Convention, have said that the Charter could be incorporated into the Treaty as it stood? Dutch Christian-Democrat Hanja-Maij-Weggen, asked him.