Duff Says 'Leaders Should Respect Convention Package Deal'

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Thu 2nd Oct 2003

In a statement today on the eve of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), European Liberal Democrat spokesman Andrew Duff said:

"The government leaders of the European Union have a duty to respect the work of the Convention they themselves set up.

"It is not good enough for individual member states to come up with their own perfect solutions to Europe's governance questions. For their proposals to prevail, they will need to be able to forge a stronger consensus than that achieved by the Convention. That will be difficult, if not impossible. The package deal done in the Convention is almost certainly the best compromise going.

"In particular, Spain and Poland should drop their attempt to get back to the Treaty of Nice. Their tactics are dangerous and their arithmetic wrong. Unpick the deal on the QMV threshold and the widening scope of QMV as well as the powers of the Commission and Parliament will be jeopardised.

"The three big states of France, Germany and the UK (combined population 200 million) can already form by themselves a blocking minority in the Council. Under the Treaty of Nice this is 38 per cent of the population of the Union (172 million). In the draft Constitution the blocking minority is 40 per cent (181 million). Even with their current privileged voting weights, Poland and Spain (78 million) need several other partners if they are to stop a piece of legislation they don't like.

"The Polish and Spanish governments should recognise the predicament of the largest member states which is that a simple majority in the Council or the Commission can be formed by the thirteen small states representing only 11 per cent of the population of the Union. That is precisely why majorities in the Council have to be qualified and votes weighed in proportion to population.

"As far as the Commission is concerned, what is far more important than its size and shape is its strength. The smaller countries must ask themselves whether a larger college will not be a weaker one."