Malta and Italy clash over European Parliament seats

Malta yesterday opposed a suggestion by the Italian government for the new EU Reform Treaty to be approved while leaving aside the new allocation of seats in the European Parliament agreed to by MEPs last week.

The suggestion was made by Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema in Luxembourg during a special session of the Intergovernmental Conference on the new treaty attended by the EU's foreign ministers.

During the meeting, held in preparation for the EU summit on Thursday and Friday in Lisbon to approve the new treaty, Mr D'Alema said Italy has a problem with its allocation of MEPs and would like to suggest that the treaty is approved while leaving the allocation of seats in the European Parliament for a later date.

"We have a serious problem with the allocation of seats as approved by the European Parliament," Mr D'Alema told his colleagues.

"If a solution is not found, Italy will not be in a position to give its assent to the treaty. However, a compromise can be found if we agree that the treaty and the issue of the allocation of seats are separated," he said.

Mr D'Alema's suggestion, which came as a surprise to the EU, was rejected by Malta.

Malta's Permanent Representative to the EU, Richard Cachia Caruana, who was attending in the absence of Foreign Minister Michael Frendo, objected.

"Malta is of the opinion that the issue of the allocation of seats is part and parcel of the whole Reform Treaty package agreed by EU heads of government last June," he said, while insisting that the two issues cannot be separated.

Council sources told The Times that Spain also took the floor to support this line.

Following a request by the Portuguese presidency, the Council's legal service agreed with Malta's position and added that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi had insisted on this when agreement was reached last June.

This latest disagreement follows comments by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi last week who was quoted as saying that he couldn't understand how Malta could get an allocation of six seats, "the same as Slovenia".

Italy is opposing the agreed distribution of seats at the European Parliament following the next election in 2009, arguing that it had been heavily penalised because it will lose six seats when compared to the present situation. It objected to the distribution system used to calculate the amount of seats to be given to each member state based on the number of residents and not the number of citizens of member states.

According to the new system, for the first time in the European Parliament's history, Italy will lose its pairing with France and the UK and will have fewer seats than the two countries. This irritated the Italians and even led to Mr Prodi travelling to Brussels to lobby before the MEPs' vote. However, his efforts proved unsuccessful.

An agreement was reached last June whereby - on Malta's insistence - EU heads of government, including Italy, gave their consent to establish a minimum threshold of six MEPs for every member state.

Council sources said Italy is expected to keep harping on the issue in the coming days to exert political pressure just before the summit meeting begins.

An agreement on the new EU treaty requires the unanimous support of all 27 member states.