Vote Dispute Puts EU at Crossroads

BRUSSELS ? The European Union is at a crossroads, its ambitious plans to add four new members next year and more by the end of the century hanging on a handful of British parliamentarians, diplomats said Wednesday.


The deepening rift over the balance of power in an expanded bloc is not just a matter of a few votes in the EU's Council of Ministers. It is about the process of European integration.


"This is not a banal quarrel about figures but one in which the philosophy about European construction itself is at stake," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said after Tuesday's meeting of EU foreign ministers that tried in vain to persuade Britain and Spain to accept a change in the power structure.


The foreign ministers have now met three weeks in succession in an attempt to decide how many votes it should take in the Council of Ministers to form a blocking minority after Norway, Sweden, Finland and Austria join.


Already the deadlock is starting to have repercussions in the four applicant countries, all of which have to put their accession deals through national referendums.


"We are very worried by these events," which which seem ready to become a major crisis if not settled in the coming days, Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock said.


Scandinavian diplomats said the crisis, if allowed to drag on, would have a negative impact on already lukewarm public opinion.


"We can't underestimate the gravity of this incident. It's putting into doubt the EU itself," Belgian Foreign Minister Willy Claes said.


Britain argues that raising the number of votes needed to block a decision to 27 from the current 23 as the total number of votes available rises to 90 from 76 with the accession of the four would make the bloc less democratic.


"This appears to many in Britain as a centralizing move too far," British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said. "In Britain itself there is a good deal of distrust and resentment at the way in which qualified majority voting has been used."


British ministers note that when Britain joined the bloc 30 percent of the population could be over-ruled by the other 70 percent, whereas now 40 percent can be out-voted by 60 percent ? an imbalance they say will get worse at the EU grows.


But Britain's ruling Conservative Party, which has only a small majority in parliament, is riven with discord about Europe. A small but influential minority of "Euroskeptics" in the party has led opposition to the gradual centralization of power in Brussels.


During the divisive debate on ratification of the Maastricht treaty last year Prime Minister John Major vowed there would be no more compromises ? a pledge that has now put him and his government in the impossible position of advocating EU enlargement but at the same time blocking it.


Major on Tuesday told parliament that his ministers would "fight Britain's corner hard" and would not be swayed by "phoney threats" from its European partners. He also denounced opposition leader John Smith as "Monsieur Oui, the poodle of Brussels."


Even if Britain does manage to squeeze a compromise that it can accept out of its EU neighbours, the deal still has to be approved by the European Parliament and ratified by all 12 national parliaments.


One of the main troubles facing the bloc is that it was supposed to be a relatively easy task to take in the four rich applicants ahead of the far more complicated negotiations with countries of East and Central Europe.


Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are already knocking at the EU's door, with negotiations pencilled in to start in earnest in 1997.