BRUSSELS, 20 September 2003 — The leaders of Britain, France and Germany will seek today to find common ground on Iraq — but they will also be under pressure to mend fences on a range of rows splitting the EU at a crucial time.
The talks among Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin come a fortnight before the launch of a landmark review of the way the 15-member European Union works, aimed at creating a first-ever EU constitution.
In particular differences over setting up a common EU defense policy may come to the fore when the leaders of the bloc’s traditional heavyweights meet for lunch at the German chancellor’s residence.
“We had different opinions on Iraq, but other than that there is an extremely high level of agreement,” Schroeder said in a newspaper interview with the Wall Street Journal Europe ahead of the weekend talks.
EU summits aside, the meeting will be the first among the three leaders since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein five months ago. It is likely to be dominated by efforts to find agreement on Iraq ahead of the UN General Assembly in New York next week.
But Iraq will not be the only item on the menu, and Blair in particular will have much to chew over after recent efforts by Chirac and Schroeder to get the EU’s Franco-German motor back in gear.
The encounter will be the trio’s first opportunity to discuss the EU’s intergovernmental conference (IGC) starting in Rome on Oct. 4, when member states will begin thrashing out the detail of the constitution.
The IGC comes at a critical juncture for the EU as it prepares to welcome 10 more member states — drawn mostly from the former Soviet bloc — in May next year.
The constitution, drawn up after months of difficult debate by a convention chaired by former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, is supposed to get the EU in shape for the demands for its bigger and more complex membership.
But the convention and the build-up to the IGC have been dominated by perennial rows over what direction the EU should take, with Britain fiercely resisting moves toward a more federalist model.
Meeting in Berlin on Thursday, Schroeder and Chirac urged the EU’s present and future members to adopt the carefully-crafted compromise of the draft EU constitution as it stands. Revising the document “runs the risk of unpicking it without producing a result of the same quality”, Schroeder said during a joint press conference.
Blair’s government is confident it has seen off the federalist challenge and any moves toward harmonizing policy in sensitive areas such as foreign affairs and tax. But prospects of a “two-speed” Europe, with Britain firmly in the slow lane, are building.
The former French minister for European affairs, Alain Lamassoure, envisaged an EU of “two menus.”
“The gourmands will plump for the gastronomic dishes including the single currency and defense, and the vegetarians will go for the diet option,” he said.
A quartet of EU members — France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg — are planning a common defense headquarters as part of an initiative to beef up the military front of the Union. And on Thursday Schroeder and Chirac announced a joint initiative designed to stimulate economic growth in the EU.
There is already talk of the 12 euro nations reinforcing their own policy coordination to the exclusion of the euro “outs” — Britain, Denmark and Sweden.Like in Sweden, which last weekend voted to stay out of the euro, British public opinion remains deeply reluctant to embrace Europe’s common currency.
