Will Spain lead a "littles" revolt?
The Italian presidency of the EU has barely started, but it is already a good bet that Silvio Berlusconi will not achieve his main goal. That is to complete the intergovernmental conference on the European constitution before the chimes of midnight on 31st December-so allowing the EU to be refounded through a new treaty of Rome and the name of Berlusconi to be etched forever into the history books. The conference will kick off on 4th October and the Italians are bravely saying that they expect to wrap it up quickly. But the more that the EU countries mull over the draft produced by Giscard and his merry men, the clearer it is that there could be big problems.
There are plenty of issues that could cause trouble-last-ditch efforts by federalists to move to majority voting on tax and foreign policy; lobbying to get a mention of religion into the statement of European values. But the biggest issue is likely to be the change in the EU's balance of power involved in shifting to a voting system based on population. The change slipped through the convention relatively easily, but the implications of it are now beginning to sink in. For all countries smaller than the big four-Germany, France, Italy and Britain-those implications are dramatic and unfavourable.
Under the current system, Spain and Poland, with populations half the size of Germany's (40m to 80m, roughly), get 27 votes in the council of ministers compared to 29 votes for Germany (the same total as Britain, Italy and France). Under the new system, the Spanish and Polish voting weight would go down to the equivalent of 15 votes to Germany's 30 and Britain, France and Italy's 23. This, of course, is no accident. The one theme that Giscard returned to again and again (at least in private) over the last 18 months was that the EU, founded by three big countries and three small ones, will by next year have 21 small and medium-size countries, and just four big ones. He argued that if the current voting system remained unchanged it would be so skewed against the bigs that it would lose democratic legitimacy.
Unsurprisingly, the smalls do not buy this argument. Many of the applicant countries feel particularly betrayed: they have just held referendums based on an apparently benign voting system. But the big question for the intergovernmental conference will be whether Spain emerges as the leader of a coalition saying no to the reweighting of votes. If that happens there could be a nasty impasse and Berlusconi will lose any chance of an end of year triumph.
Rome vs Dublin
In some ways it would be a shame if the EU missed out on the opportunity to sign its constitution in Rome. The city's claim to be the spiritual centre of the drive for European unity is based on a lot more than the signature of the treaty of Rome in 1957. The Roman empire was, after all, the most successful exercise yet in European unification. Catholicism has always provided a pan-European cultural thread. In fact there is still talk that-even if the intergovernmental conference spills over into 2004 and the Irish presidency-the ceremonial bits may still take place in Rome. But while EU leaders-always suckers for symbolism-may like the idea of a new treaty of Rome, they also have to consider the Silvio factor. What if he pinches someone's bum at the signing ceremony, or makes another "ironic" reference to Nazism, or gets served with a court summons? The other prime ministers also have to think about the picture that will appear in the history books. Do they really want it to feature a grinning Berlusconi centre stage?
What shall we do with Silvio?
The really big Berlusconi question is whether you treat the man as a buffoon or as something more sinister? The EU likes to go on about how it is a "community of values." Foremost among those values are an independent legal system and a pluralistic media, both of which are distinctly questionable in modern Italy. But if EU leaders take seriously the idea that Italian democracy is threatened by Berlusconi's power over the media and his assault on the judiciary, they are then faced with the obvious question: what are you going to do about it? This question is so awkward that it is just easier to go on pretending that nothing is happening. The same tactic is being adopted by Italian diplomats. There are a few real Berlusconi loyalists within the Italian foreign ministry. Umberto Vattani, Italy's representative in Brussels, recently lectured a table of journalists about how Berlusconi's "Nazi" joke at the European parliament had been genuinely hilarious. Other top Italian diplomats will defend their boss's eccentricities if they absolutely have to, but generally prefer quickly to switch the discussion to other issues. Brought up in the staunchly federalist national tradition, the Italian diplomatic corps are taking comfort in the fact that Berlusconi has thrown his weight behind the Giscard constitution-and is not playing the spoiling role that British Eurosceptics had hopefully assigned to him. But every now and then you get an insight into the despair felt by many servants of the Italian state. One senior official broke off from a half-hearted attempt to explain Berlusconi's appeal to Italians to remark to your correspondent. "Actually, I think the best way to understand a Berlusconi speech is to think of Orwellian Newspeak. 'Peace is war,' 'objectivity is bias,' 'justice is injustice.'"
