04/12/2003 (Agence Europe) - British Labour member Richard Corbett, MEP, suggests that the current deadlock between those in favour of double majority in Council and those in favour of the Nice solution could be broken. The idea is to take inspiration from the "Ioannina compromise", after the town in northern Greece where Foreign Ministers had tried, in March 1994, to settle the problem of the threshold of votes needed for qualified majority in Council after accession by Austria, Finland and Sweden (at the time, John Major had called for a reduction in the percentage of votes needed to reach a blocking minority in Council: see EUROPE of 23 March 1994). Mr Corbett recalls that the compromise allowed a Member State in a minority position to call for discussion in Council to continue (Ed.: during a "reasonable" period of time) if, according to the former system, it was not placed in minority. The Ioannina compromise has not been invoked since to block a decision, Mr Corbett notes. He believes the IGC could, on one hand, decide to introduce the double majority system, but, on the other, could "adopt a declaration (or a protocol or a footnote) whereby a decision that would not have been carried under the old voting system could, if a member State requested, be postponed and subject to further discussion".