The Position of Small Countries towards Institutional Reform: From tyranny of the small to directoir

This paper explores the positions of small countries on the question of the Council presidency and the question of the size, composition and legitimacy of the Commission.

The Convention, despite progress on many important issues, faced unprecedented divisions over some of the most fundamental questions of power balance in the EU of 25 or more members. The diverging stances have been presented as a clash between the smaller and larger member states of the Union. As we cannot naturally assume that the positions taken by smaller countries are the same on all the issues and neither are those of the big ones, for the ones where there seems to be major disagreements – i.e. the institutional questions – this rule largely applies.

Looking at the arithmetic, in May 2004, there will be only six large member states (Poland included) out of 25, which will, however, account for roughly three-quarters of the Union’s population. This is an entirely different situation from the original European Communities for which the institutions were designed. Although the respective major institutional players underwent some changes in the period, no major reshuffling of power took place. Since then the number of small countries increased and this will be even more the case after ten new countries join in May next year. That is why attempts are being made to redesign the institutions to suit a different Europe from the one we have known until recently.

The issue was recently exacerbated in the endgame politics of the Convention. On the one hand, the Praesidium and its chairman Valéry Giscard d´Estaing consistently refused to incorporate the proposals of the small countries or to come up with a compromise solution until some changes occurred in the final stages. The Convention boss even acknowledged to some European media that one should not naturally assume that the states are equal. This provoked an allergic reaction and counter-proposals from a vast majority of smaller countries in the Convention. The compromise of the Convention was presented by Mr Giscard to the European Council in Thessaloniki 20 June 2003. Although the Convention in the end managed to come up with one single proposal, there is still room for bargaining in the upcoming IGC. There is a risk that the ambition of the Convention is going to be watered down and the EU is going to end up in a similar institutional muddle as after Nice.

The

complete paperis available from the CEPS website.