Ministers vergaderen over controversiële institutionele zaken (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg today will attempt to make progress on crucial institutional questions that will shape the division of power in a future EU.

Ministers from the 25 current and future member states will try and agree on the composition of the Commission as well as the exact role of the EU foreign minister - itself, one of the major innovations of the draft Constitution.

Both are thorny issues. The make-up of the Commission, however, is the question which has pitted the small against larger states and seen the most entrenched views.

In a special attempt to resolve the issue by the Italian EU Presidency, the dinner meeting tonight, (13 October), will be held without the presence of officials.

Treaty by questionnaire

The current draft of the Constitution, suggests having a core 15 Commissioners with voting rights and the rest - one per member state - without.

But several small countries, led predominantly by Austria and Finland, are putting up a hard fight for one Commissioner per member state with full voting rights.

Otherwise they fear a loss of equality among Commissioners and the creation of a two-tier system - beneficial to larger countries.

The present Commission itself is also against the proposal in the Draft Constitution.

For their part, large countries fear a large and unwieldy Brussels executive.

In order to try and make some progress on the issue, over which arguments have been going on for months, all delegations have filled out questionnaires at the behest of the Italian Presidency.

But ahead of today's meeting, which is likely to see some hefty discussion, the views still run the whole gamut.

Several countries are still maintaining their official position until they can be sure that they have secured what they wanted in other lesser - but nationally important - areas, say sources.

Foreign Minister powers

The foreign minister issue is less controversial as none of the countries is opposing the draft Treaty's idea of a minister combining the current external relations Commissioner post with that of the EU's High Representative.

However, there are some important details. Several countries are opposed to the foreign minister, who will also be vice-President of the Commission, chairing the external relations council.

There are also questions about whether the foreign minister will have voting rights in the Commission, and how to ensure that the minister does not step over the boundary into other external relations areas such as trade.

Agreement before Brussels Summit?

Foreign Ministers will try and reach some preliminary agreements on these issues before their leaders gather in Brussels at the end of the week for the Autumn Summit (16-17 October).

There, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini is set to provide an overview of the discussion during a morning debate on the Constitution on Thursday.

Whether there is any progress on the issues today, particularly concerning the Commission, will give an indication of how likely it is that other even more controversial questions on the Constitution - such as vote weighting - will eventually also be resolved.