"I did not appreciate what happened in Deauville," Reding said, referring to the seaside town where France and Germany struck a deal last week to enshrine tougher rules for the euro zone in a new EU treaty.
"Do you remember what happened with the Lisbon Treaty? It took ten years to get it approved. It would be irresponsible to open that Pandora's Box," Reding told a press conference in Brussels yesterday (27 October).
In an interview with German paper Die Welt, Reding added that Paris and Berlin were "insulting" other nations by trying to impose decisions on the other EU member states.
The reaction from Paris did not wait long. "The terms this European commissioner uses to denigrate the France-German proposals are unacceptable and of the same tenor as the insulting language, which I will not forget, used against France during the controversy that she herself fuelled over the Roma," said Pierre Lellouche, the French State Secretary in charge of European affairs.
Although Reding's line is shared by many others at the European Commission, the EU executive did not officially back the vice-president. "What was expressed by Vice-President Viviane Reding were her personal views," said spokesperson Olivier Bailly at a briefing yesterday.
Growing hostility to Franco-German plans
The row comes as European leaders meet today (28 October) for a European summit in Brussels where the Franco-German proposal is expected to be met with growing hostility from other EU member states.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the Eurogroup and prime minister of Luxembourg, Reding's home country, echoed the commissioner's remarks, saying the Franco-German plan was "unacceptable because it does not guarantee a serious path towards stability".
The deal "leaves a bad taste" for other EU states, which feel they are being told what to do, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn added.
Belgian Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere, who chaired a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg earlier this week, said countries were wary of opening up a Pandora's Box of institutional reform. "Nobody around the table wants to open up the treaty and change it fundamentally," Vanackere told reporters.
Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said no-one should assume that even a tweak to the treaty's rules would pass easily. "In this world, anything is possible [...] but it's not very likely," Schwarzenberg said.
Diplomatic sources also confirmed widespread opposition to changing the EU Treaties for whatever reason. "This would mean embarking in a process where other issues could be brought up," warned a Brussels-based diplomat, referring to calls by hardliners in the UK Conservative Party to "repatriate" EU powers to Westminster.
Among big countries, Italy and Poland are also opposed to the Franco-German plan. Warsaw and other Eastern European member states are especially worried that new harsher sanctions would hurt their economies if they meant blocking the EU funding which they say is needed to fuel their economies.
"Do not expect any treaty change to be made at this Council," said an official close to Permanent EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy.
