Irish test compromise EU deal

European Union president Ireland has circulated a new compromise proposal on the bloc's constitution aimed at overcoming Polish and Spanish opposition to the charter, diplomats said yesterday.

The idea, a sort of emergency brake on majority decisions, has been circulated to several governments, and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern will discuss it with the EU's big three - France, Germany and Britain - on his tour this week, they said.

"This is an informal written proposal," one EU government official told Reuters.

Mr Ahern is trying to forge a compromise on how voting power will be allotted among the EU's 15 old and 10 new members in time for a June 17-18 summit which is due to clinch a deal.

A previous attempt to agree on a new rulebook for the bloc, to enable it to keep functioning after enlargement last month by taking most decisions by qualified majority voting rather than unanimity, collapsed in December over the voting weights issue.

The Irish proposal focuses on adding a "safety valve" to the majority decision-making by allowing a group of states that face being outvoted on a sensitive decision to delay it and raise the majority threshold needed to approve it, the sources said.

This would be modelled on what EU insiders call Ioannina compromise, worked out in 1994 to solve Britain's concerns about being outvoted when Finland, Sweden and Austria joined in 1995, changing the balance of power in the EU.

It allowed the minority to call for further negotiation to seek a broader majority. But it has never been invoked.

Diplomats said Poland, the biggest of former ex-communist states that joined the EU, saw the Irish draft as a step in the right direction but that Warsaw would insist on modifications.

EU diplomats see Poland as the biggest obstacle to any deal on voting rights because of its crippling political crisis.