Brussels, 14/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - On Monday, for the first time, the Presidency of the Council submitted possible scenarios to its partners for the two decisive aspects of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on reforming the institutions: the size and composition of the European Commission, the weighting of votes in Council. No breakthrough is really expected on these aspects before the Nice Summit of 7 to 9 December; the Presidency does however intend to rationalize the debate by presenting detailed and quantified models on which the Preparatory Group of the IGC were able to express their opinions on Monday, before Sunday's ministerial conclave, Group chaired by Pierre Vimont, France's Permanent Representative.
Concerning the European Commission, two options are on the table: a Commission comprising a national from each Member State or a Commission with a ceiling, with egalitarian rotation of Commissioners, according to their nationality. The first option, demanded by the small countries (notably Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Luxembourg) "is now backed by fewer and fewer Member States, and there is a move towards a "deferred ceiling", for which the number of Commissioners and date remain to be defined", says the French Presidency spokesperson. The preferred number so far for a Commission with a ceiling is said to be 20 (current number of Commissioners), but many Member States are pleading in favour of a higher figure (22, 24 and 27). As for the condition and time for the move to this new Commission, important questions remain. Most Member States seem to be in favour of a date corresponding to the time a future Commission takes office, and not on the expected or actual accession of a certain number of new States (i.e., at the time of the mandate of the next European Executive, 1 January 2005, or the following one, 1 January 2010). The corollary to a ceiling would be an "egalitarian" rotation of Commissioners, for which the precise modalities could not be enshrined in the Treaty but decided later by the Council. Finally, the powers of the President of the Commission would be strengthened.
The Presidency also submitted 5 quantified variations for the weighting of votes in Council, calculating for each the percentage of the population and Member states that would represent a qualified majority. "We now have quite a complete picture of possible scenarios but are still at the beginning of discussions", a European source commented.
The question of extending qualified majority voting in Council, notably in the more problematic fields (tax, social policy, the environment, trade policy, asylum and immigration), moreover, was the subject of a lengthy discussion. "But we are finding it hard to progress", the Presidency recognised. The European Parliament has proposed inserting a reference to the Charter of Fundamental Rights in Article 6 of the Treaty (on the EU's fundamental principles), but for many States, this question should be postponed until after Nice.