The third draft of the compact – leaked on Wednesday (11 January) on the website of the British think tank Open Europe – was welcomed by UK Conservatives since it reduced explicit references to the single market, which the British want preserved as EU prerogatives.
But a statement from leading MEPs said the wording was “incompatible with the existing EU treaties”, claiming that it failed to respect the “community method” of decision-making, where EU institutions take precedence over national governments.
Parliament’s bark worse than bite
The statement was jointly signed by Elmar Brok (EPP, Germany), Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy), Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, Belgium) and Daniel Cohn-Bendit (Greens/EFA, France).
Although the MEPs have no power to push for amendments to the new treaty, noisy criticism of its contents could disturb the negotiations, and thereby provoke market jitters.
A source close to the negotiations revealed to EurActiv that on Wednesday night (11 January), Elmar Brok secured two significant changes to the wording of the draft.
Brok asked for more explicit reference to the EU treaties – to underline that the compact will be compatible with these – and also secured a clause granting the leaders of the European Parliament’s main political groups the right to address eurozone summits.
To be agreed in January, signed in March
The source said that, following the deal, the fiscal compact remained on track to be agreed by the end of January, to enable heads of government - meeting for the summit scheduled now for 30 January - to focus on measures for growth, rather than debating the new treaty.
The Council remains optimistic that one more working group meeting may now be required before the compact is finally agreed, although more can easily be held, but the January summit will not become a signing ceremony.
“The completed document will need to be translated into all the signatories' languages, and for that reason the deadline of March for the signing remains realistic,” another Council official said.
COMMENTS
I am quite puzzled as to why the author of this piece would make such a big fuss about the views of the three 'observing' MEPs, and why the reader should care? Their views on the fiscal compact are irrelevant, frankly. MEPs have no legal power whatsoever to make amendments to the compact (as the reader learns somewhere in the second paragraph). The concern voiced by the author about 'noisy criticims' provoking 'market jitters' is way overblown. Market actors are smarter than EurActiv seems to give them credit for.
What is more, negotiations among the member states are difficult enough already. The last thing they need are three meddling MEPs who intentionally torpedo the process out of narrow institutional self-interest, thus harming the European project they profess to serve. EurActiv should do better than be a mere sound piece for MEPs.
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