Irish to British: Don't expect any special favors.
Blair's EU deals now void, warns Ahern
Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, has warned that Tony Blair will have to fight again to protect Britain's "red lines" on foreign policy, tax and defence if and when talks on the EU constitution resume.
He also said French ideas for a "two speed" Europe, with a hardcore of countries pursuing integration faster than others, would create an unmanageable nightmare.
Mr Ahern, running the union's rotating presidency for the next six months, is exploring prospects for renewing the constitutional negotiations after their collapse at the Brussels summit last month.
But he said Mr Blair could not take for granted any understandings reached before the previous EU president, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, decided to suspend the process. "There were a lot of talks," Mr Ahern told Brussels-based correspondents visiting Dublin. "But there was nothing on paper."
Mr Blair told parliament after the summit that he believed there was a consensus that Britain's "red lines," or non-negotiable policy areas, would be respected in a final deal.
Mr Ahern said however that the only texts he would recognise were the draft constitution drawn up by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's Brussels convention and amendments set out by the Italians in Naples in November.
That means British negotiators - closely watched by the Tories and the Eurosceptic sections of the media - will have to continue to oppose proposals to drop the national veto on tax issues, and for majority voting in foreign policy and some criminal justice matters.
Mr Ahern's toughest job will be to persuade France and Germany, on the one hand, and Spain and Poland on the other, to compromise over the vexed issue of voting weights in the policymaking council of ministers. So he is wisely lowering expectations of success. "I will try to cajole and push people forward, but I can't make anyone do anything."
France's ambassador to Britain, Gerard Errera, warned yesterday that Paris would not resign itself to seeing the European project "blown apart" by continuing disagreements. "For those countries which have the will to go further or more rapidly, I don't think they should be stopped from doing so," he told the ePolitix.com website.
politics.guardian.co.uk
lurqer |
