Lidstaten zetten hun hakken in het zand tijdens IGC (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - It became clear at a meeting of EU leaders on Thursday on the EU Constitution that nothing will be agreed until everything is agreed.

Governments are now patently waiting for the Italian Presidency to provide a complete `package' that will contain a compromise solution to all of the - mainly institutional - questions that are bogging down negotiations on the Constitution blueprint.

The package, which will contain proposals on the make up of the Commission and the vote weighting system, is set to be presented mid-November, indicated Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on Thursday (16 October) in Brussels.

However, until then member states are going to continue to play the national card - which was so evident again this morning.

The tour-de-table held in the IGC meeting in Brussels saw a mere repetition of the national positions already given at the opening of the intergovernmental debate on 4 October in Rome.

Spain and Poland stuck to their demands

Spain and Poland stuck with their demands that the Nice Treaty, which gives them relatively beneficial voting rights - not be opened , while Austria repeated its calls for one Commissioner per member state.

"Compromises are always only there at the end", said Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero Waldner "that is clear".

"There is not much to say", said Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor adding that he hoped there would be a compromise in Rome, where governments are set to meet at the end of November.

In fact, Germany did not contribute to the tour de table at all, while France said very little - they just let Belgium and Luxembourg speak for them, said a diplomat.

Package - a way out

However, the package will offer a way out for those countries that have played a very hard bargaining game up until now.

Due to be presented at an extra informal summit mid-November, it will allow countries such as Spain and Poland ("Nice Treaty or die") a more graceful political exit.

Commentators present at the talks said that it will allow Madrid to soften its position on a future voting system.

In the meantime, Italy intends to hold bilateral discussion with member states on particular sticking issues, said Mr Frattini.

However, there is a feeling that this will provide the dynamism needed to get the talks going. "I think now we have finished that work [repeating national positions]" said the Commission representative in the IGC, Michel Barnier, adding that negotiations on a "dynamic compromise" would begin.

Mr Frattini said that by the end of November it will be clear to everybody what the Presidency's position is and then there will be a "final round of analysis".