Some Heads of Government were distracted. The Decision made at the Summit of Nice to gradually transfer all European Councils to Brussels continues to cause a stir. Several Heads of Government have admitted … that they had not noticed having approved it. President Chirac had presented it on Monday 11 December at around four in the morning as a concession to Belgium. Following a suspension of the session (and a slight change to the number of votes for Lithuania and Romania within the enlarged EU Council), Mr. Verhofstadt had waived his reservation on the new Treaty as a whole and Jacques Chirac had observed: "there is agreement on the whole package", it being understood that this package comprised a "declaration of the location of the meeting of the European Council" proposed previously, even though in fact it had never really been discussed. One week later, certain Heads of Government had not even realised. In particular, the new President of the European Council, Goran Persson, said that he had not subscribed to such a declaration. But at the same time, in Brussels, the Committee of Permanent Representatives, with all the texts and the verbatim of Nice at its disposal, recognised that the declaration in question had indeed been adopted, and Goran Persson gave way.
May we remind you of the text annexed to the Nice Treaty: "From 2002, half the annual meetings of the European Council and at least one a year, shall be held in Brussels. When the Union has eighteen members, all the meetings of the European Council will be held in Brussels." That's clear.
Let's not forget Barcelona and Seville. Is the decision therefore secured? Do we no longer talk about it, and Belgium gets on with fulfilling its task? Far from it. It's now that the difficulties begin. First remark: the declaration of Nice only refers to official summits, the informal summits may therefore be held elsewhere than in Brussels. Second remark: organising summits is expensive and will be even more so with the increase in the number of Member States. Belgium does not believe that it is up to it to cover all the costs, that's the task of the Council Secretariat. Romano Prodi has therefore made some bitter-sweet remarks: increasingly becoming the actual "capital of Europe" deserves some organisational expenses. Talks over costs are continuing, but already the authorities of the Brussels region are preparing an ad hoc seat for the future summits (the site of the Tour et Taxis). But meanwhile, it's Spain which is rearing its head. It will chair the Council in the first half of 2002, and would therefore be the first country to implement the new rules. But its government has pointed out that that it had begun to prepare "its" summits some time back, well before the decision taken in Nice: the first is scheduled to be held in Barcelona in March 2002, the second in Seville in June. It does not intend backing off. Whatever, there is nothing to say that by then the Treaty of Nice will have been ratified by all the parliaments and that it will therefore be in force…
For and against. Over and above these specific objections, the decision taken in Nice is sometimes disputed for its very principle. Summits are not only a question of cost or of displacing people with many engagements. It's a whole city, a whole country, which for a certain number of days speak of nothing else but Europe: television, radio, newspapers.. All these "greats" gathered together… Within a few years, in an enlarged Europe, a summit in a new member country will not be the event of the year. Whereas in Brussels, a European Council every three months will become routine. And that's where someone asks: would it not be useful, for spreading the European idea, to have at least one summit per semester in the country holding the Presidency? To which problems of organisation, of communication, of travelling to small, far-flung countries are raised…
There is no conclusion to these remarks, other than this: decisions that may be binding for the future and that concern fifteen countries, and then twenty and more, cannot be improvised. They must be discussed, the for and against assessed, reflected upon. We didn't do so before? We must now. (F.R.).