Italy, France reject concessions on EU vote system

European Union President Italy said yesterday it would propose minor changes to the draft text of an EU constitution but would make no concessions on voting rights - the main problem facing an EU summit later this week.

The draft document is designed to enable the bloc to run smoothly when it expands next May to 25 members from 15, but the question of voting rights when ministers take decisions has proved highly contentious.

"We won't be changing what we suggested before... We don't feel that alternative proposals really come through strongly," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told a news conference after a day of talks by current and future EU foreign ministers. Poland and Spain benefit from voting rules agreed in the Nice Treaty of 2000 and want to keep them, while the draft constitution would change the rules, simplifying them and linking voting power more closely to population size.

"The presidency felt there was not broad enough agreement," Mr Frattini said, implying that if Poland and Spain did not compromise, the constitution would not be adopted.

"For us it's either a good constitution or no constitution at all. A shoddy constitutional treaty leaving the issue unresolved is not an option for us," he said.

France earlier told its EU partners not to try to postpone this central reform of the voting system for majority decision-making, supposed to be agreed at this week's talks. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin rejected proposals by Britain and Poland to put off a decision on re-allocating member states' voting weights until 2008 or 2009, saying this would gut the new charter of its substance.

"France would be hostile to simply postponing certain decisions," Mr Villepin told reporters after the final ministerial negotiating session before the EU summit opens on Friday.

Officials said a possible compromise gaining ground was that the leaders might agree on a reform of the complex voting system but delay its introduction until 2012 or 2014 instead of 2009, as proposed in the draft constitution. France and Germany officially oppose any delay.

"If we delay, if we leave some issues on the sidelines, we will not have lived up to expectations and it would be better to leave things as they stand now," Mr Villepin said.

France and Germany are determined to move ahead with closer integration even if the summit fails, he said in a veiled warning to Spain and Poland of the consequences if they refuse to compromise.

The 2000 Nice treaty, which takes effect in January 2005, gave Spain and Poland nearly as many votes in EU decision-making as Berlin, although they each have less than half Germany's 82 million population.

A Convention of lawmakers and national representatives proposed a streamlined system under which most decisions would pass if backed by a simple majority of member states representing at least 60 per cent of the EU population.

Participants said little progress was made in yesterday's talks and the voting rights dispute was not even formally discussed.

Instead, ministers discussed a bid by non-aligned EU states to water down a proposed mutual defence clause so it does not bind them into a military alliance, and efforts by the main net contributors to the bloc's budget to prevent the European Parliament gaining the last word on EU spending.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who suggested 10 days ago that postponing the voting issue might be the best way out, denied yesterday he was trying to block reform.

"Everybody understands that it's highly desirable, but if it has to be deferred, it gets deferred and life goes on," he said.

Polish Europe Minister Danuta Huebner opposed any commitment to change the voting system. "We simply believe that we should see Nice, try it and test it, see how it works and then come together and make a decision on its future," she told reporters.

In Warsaw, Prime Minister Leszek Miller said the increasingly tough tone of countries demanding reform of the voting system could presage a crisis.

But Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz told a seminar: "Poland will do everything, absolutely everything, to conclude our negotiations successfully in December..." a possible signal of flexibility in the Polish position.

EU leaders are due to wrap up the negotiations on Saturday, but the programme allows for possible extra sessions on Sunday.