The EU after Lisbon

Anthony Manduca speaks to Michael Frendo, who participated in, negotiated and signed the European Convention, the European Constitutional Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty.

The Lisbon Treaty comes into force on December 1 and Dr Frendo, a former Foreign Minister, says thus on the 10-year process that is finally over.

"It is a unique experience in Malta but in Europe there are two of us who went through the whole 10-year process of reviewing the European Union and setting for it a new fundamental framework to take it forward in the decades ahead. The other person is my good friend Karel De Gucht, who, after participating in the Convention, later became Belgian Foreign Minister - at the same time that I was Foreign Minister - and is now the European Commissioner nominated by Belgium."

He says that personally participating in the formulation and signing of all the three treaty documents, including the Treaty of Lisbon, was also a lot of hard and painstaking detailed work "as is the characteristic of all achievement in the European Union".

He adds: "While working for a stronger Europe, of course, we still fought tooth and nail for Malta's interests and we managed to reach our objectives."

Did he mean the sixth seat in the European Parliament, an issue that he raised in the Convention?

"That is certainly one of the achievements. In the European Convention, almost 10 years ago, I had raised the issue that there has to be a minimum threshold for seats for small countries for them to be able to function within the European Parliament. I had made reference to the Luxembourg experience. In the Convention, I had tried to get the support of the Luxembourg members but they could not yet see that even they, founder member states, were in danger of going down from their six seats. They understood it later and came around to supporting our position on a minimum threshold of six seats when we came to the Constitutional Treaty and, later, the Lisbon Treaty."

He explains that it is not correct, as some journalists have stated, that Malta achieved the sixth seat in the Lisbon Treaty. "We had won that right in the Constitutional Treaty and we defended that position in the Lisbon Treaty in a long night in which Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and I stood our ground against the attempt to fudge, or even set aside, the issue in the rush to come to an agreement."

Dr Frendo says the minimum of six seats was achieved in two steps. At the Convention, he had initially managed to achieve the acceptance of the principle that, in the same way that a maximum number of seats was established, a minimum number of seats had also to be set.

"However, since in the Convention text the minimum was set at four, in the negotiations to the Constitutional Treaty we then pushed the minimum number up to six and it stayed that way in the Lisbon Treaty."

Regarding the fact that originally EU member states were to nominate a Commission on a rotation basis, Dr Frendo says he had always been uncomfortable with this idea.

"I think that the more varied the Union becomes, the more it is important to have someone around the table who, though not speaking for his or her country, knows that country well and can convey to the College of Commissioners the specificities of that country in the decision-making process. This makes for a stronger not a weaker Commission."

He explains that the evening before the Prime Minister, John Dalli and him were scheduled to fly to Brussels for the European Council, which was discussing the final points of the Constitutional Treaty, he got the idea of an amendment to the treaty that would give it an internal mechanism not to get to the reduction of commissioner.

"In brief, this amendment, which I then had approved by Lawrence Gonzi and Mr Dalli since I was parliamentary secretary at the time, said that the article on the reduction of the Commission would not be triggered into operation if all the member states unanimously agreed to continue with the system of one commissioner per member state. The clause was put in with a slight change of wording but the substance was retained. Without that clause inside the treaty, it would not have been possible to accommodate Ireland after it had rejected the Lisbon Treaty in the first referendum."

He says now that institutional reform is finally off the agenda, the EU must concentrate on delivering the value added of being a Union to the European citizens in its member states.

"It has tremendous opportunities of doing so and must not lose them. One opportunity is ironically provided to it by the issue of illegal immigration. The EU must show each citizen of its individual member states, particularly of those member states most under pressure, that together we can achieve much more than on our own. In order to do that, European joint action needs to be effective and provide tangible results."

Dr Frendo says he would have been surprised had the EU opted for a political heavyweight as President of the European Council. The member states, he remarks, were being cautious in their approach and went for a safe pair of hands coming from a member state that is at the very core of the integration process, a eurozone member and a Schengen state.

With the appointment of a beefed up European foreign policy chief, Dr Frendo says that, in the longer term, European diplomacy is about to change quite dramatically.

"Having a European foreign service, headed by a European foreign policy chief, with her own substantial resources, will not only be a bureaucratic change. It can, potentially, bring a sea change to how things are done. It can have a dramatic effect on member state diplomacy and the way that member state foreign services and foreign policies interact with the EU and with third countries. As a small member state, we must be ready to re-fashion our workings and to keep ahead of the game," he says.