Who shot the Brussels summit?

By Oana Lungescu BBC European correspondent in Brussels

The EU began 2003 divided over Iraq and ends it in disarray over its future. A summit in Brussels last weekend failed to resolve a bitter row over voting rights, while France and Germany revived the idea of a two-speed Europe - how did the EU get itself in such a mess?

Mr Miller arrived with little room for manoeuvre; he left a national hero

"Ah madame," sighed the Moroccan taxi driver, as we drove away from the pink granite building of the EU Council of Ministers last Saturday night.

"December the thirteenth, a bad day for the Union. People who aren't members of the club yet, should not try to impose their own rules," he said.

Like many across Europe, the taxi driver was blaming the collapse of the constitutional talks on Poland and its Prime Minister Leszek Miller.

With a weak coalition at home and an opposition calling for "Nice or death," Mr Miller had arrived in Brussels with little margin for manoeuvre. He left a national hero.

Despite suffering spinal injuries in a recent helicopter crash, he had defied his doctors' orders, joining the other EU leaders in a wheelchair.

Confessionals

That did not prevent his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi from cracking one of his jokes about being dropped from a helicopter.

If there were efforts to reach an agreement, we didn't see them, but the hidden agenda became increasingly clear Central European diplomat

Not exactly diplomatic from the man who was expected to broker an historic deal on the first European constitution.

Over lunch, Mr Berlusconi also failed to endear himself to another key player, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany.

"Let's talk about football and women," Mr Berlusconi suggested. And turning to the four-times married Mr Schroeder, "Gerhard, why don't you start."

"I don't know much about women," Mr Schroeder apparently replied, looking sourly at his asparagus risotto. "But I thought you knew something about food."

Then, until one o'clock in the morning, Mr Berlusconi drew some of his colleagues aside for a series of "confessionals" - not the religious sort, but a traditional form of EU negotiations to find out each government's bottom line.

Some prime ministers apparently stood outside Mr Berlusconi's door only to be turned away without an explanation. One delegation gave up and went to a pub.

Blank sheet

There was talk of four different compromise formulae for the voting system and, on the eve of the summit, Mr Berlusconi had suggested he had a secret plan in his pocket.

When the Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern asked him what it was, Mr Berlusconi dramatically reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. It was blank.

France is keener on deepening the EU than widening it

The Polish Prime Minister was apparently told on Friday night that the summit would not reach a conclusion, even though there he had not been involved in a serious round of negotiations.

"If there were efforts to reach an agreement, we didn't see them, but the hidden agenda became increasingly clear," one central European diplomat recalled.

I became aware of that hidden agenda at lunchtime on Saturday, just a few minutes after the rumour started that the summit had failed.

Frantically trying to get confirmation, I rushed to the main entrance and ran into a diplomat I had known for years.

"Work is over for today," he declared, bundling me and a couple of other journalists into an elevator.

Only when we had arrived at a quiet corner on level 35, did he give us his version of events.

"Poland, Spain and Germany, were ready to talk about a deal," he said.

The country that had rejected any negotiations was... France.

We looked at him in disbelief. He insisted that the French were hiding behind the Poles and letting them take all the blame.

Pioneer group

There is, of course, no single culprit in this murky political whodunnit.

Poland stubbornly dug its heels in, in the mistaken belief that it would get a face-saving deal, as it had exactly a year before at the end of the EU membership negotiations. But some wanted to teach the Poles a lesson.

France has always been suspicious of enlargement, arguing that a club of 25 or more would simply not work. Now it has proved its point.

The statement on 'two-speed Europe' never saw the light of day in Brussels, for fear that its signatories would be accused... of poisoning the summit

Other diplomats have confirmed that France, supported by Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, had been preparing to release a call for closer integration among a selected group of countries.

On Friday night, French President Jacques Chirac consulted Chancellor Schroeder and the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt about it.

A few hours before, they had asked Luxembourg's Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, to sound out two newcomers, the Hungarians and the Czechs.

Both, along with Greece, said "Yes, they would be part of a pioneer group."

It was Mr Chirac who launched the idea of such a group in 2000.

At his press conference on Saturday, he described it again as a "good solution". It would allow Europe to move faster, further, better.

Mr Schroeder appeared more cautious. "We do not want a two-speed Europe," he explained. But he added that it would be inevitable if the constitution could not be completed within a reasonable time frame.

However, the statement on "two-speed Europe" never saw the light of day in Brussels, for fear that its signatories would be accused, as one diplomat put it, of poisoning the summit.

The poisoned chalice of the constitution now passes to Ireland, the next holder of the EU presidency.

Mr Ahern has promised to "have a go" at picking up the pieces in March. But the debate will run in parallel with tough talks on the EU's next budget.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the pioneer group is planned, however, for January or February.

No one knows what they will do in practice. But if the constitution talks remain stalled, the enlarged EU may be even more bitterly divided in a year from now.

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From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Wednesday, 17 December, 2003, on BBC World Service. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

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