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Prodi asks for new powers to eclipse EU governments

Stephen Castle
Thursday 23 May 2002 00:00 BST
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The European Commission put itself squarely at odds with the EU's bigger countries yesterday with an ambitious bid for extra powers over foreign policy, tax and economic and judicial affairs.

In a paper published in Brussels, Romano Prodi, the Commission's president, called for sweeping new responsibilities to boost the role of the EU on the world stage. The document provoked a sharply different response in large and small member states and was pronounced "dead on arrival" by one Foreign Office official yesterday.

Britain and France, the EU's two biggest defence powers, are hostile to calls for a bigger involvement of the Commission over common foreign and security policy and are anxious to preserve most of the powers of the nation states. But small member states welcomed efforts to beef up the role of the Commission, which has traditionally been seen as their guardian within the EU.

The document calls for an end to national vetoes in foreign policy and judicial and home affairs and for the EU to gain the ability to raise taxes to fund its activities. There would also be harmonisation of some tax policies and of some criminal and civil law, and for the Commis-sion to represent eurozone states at bodies such as the International Monetary Fund.

The blueprint also suggests that the group of 12 countries inside the eurozone, which meets informally, should become a formal decision-taking council, a move that would be anathema to Britain.

Meanwhile, the Commission's ability to enforce budgetary discipline on member states would be increased. It would be able to give a formal warning to countries with a growing deficit, one that only a unanimous decision of all 15 governments would be able to block.

Mr Prodi's document has been submitted to an inquiry into the future of the Europe chaired by the former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. He will recommend a series of changes designed to equip the EU for its enlargement in 2004. Ultimately the 15 EU leaders will have to agree on any changes, although the report produced by Mr Giscard's European Convention will help shape their decisions.

One senior Commission official conceded that it was risky to submit such an ambitious document, and acknowledged the EU's big member states now clearly preferred "inter-governmental" co-operation among the member states, to the "community method", based around the Commission and the European Parliament.

But he added that the Commission had the support of a majority of the 105-strong European Convention. In particular the Commission plan would streamline and simplify EU structures by ending the system under which justice and home affairs and foreign policy are in separate inter- governmental "pillars".

Although the Foreign Office welcomed the document as a contribution to the debate, officials were scathing in private. "We won't have to be vocal about it," said one, "because there are other member states which will have more difficulty than us with it.

"The Commission has presented a long shopping list but I don't think much will be purchased from it."

French reaction was more cautious although lukewarm at best. Paris is hostile to the Commission taking a bigger role in common foreign and security policy, although more sympathetic to boosting powers over economic co-ordination.

One of the Commission's suggestions which is likely to be resisted is that the job of the EU's foreign policy supremo, Javier Solana, should be sited in the Commission and the role augmented.

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