Analyse the changes to European Union's institutions introduced by the Treaty of Nice

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Law of the European Union

Analyse the changes to European Union’s institutions introduced by the Treaty of Nice

 Nice was far from being a triumph-particularly for the French Presidency. Nor, however, was it a disaster. Four observations must suffice:

1. The Treaty of Nice was bound to be modest.
The core business consisted of the issues that the European Council could not agree on at Amsterdam in June 1997. Other questions were added to the agenda as the IGC progressed. None of them could however be compared with the stuff from which the Single European Act and the treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam were made. As the meeting at Nice confirmed, heads of government and state can invest even relatively trivial issues with dramatic potential. For all the sound and fury that surrounded their endeavours, however, the questions that they addressed remain relatively unimportant.

2. The bad news from Nice was largely the result of poor chairmanship.
The mood amongst many if not most of those who had been involved in the IGC prior to Nice was moderately optimistic as the Council began. The opening day at Nice itself confirmed the impression that the wind was set fair. The European Conference with the 13 candidate countries plus Switzerland left everybody including the Turks feeling satisfied. The first session of the Council proper was quietly productive, particularly regarding enlargement, where Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato succeeded in persuading his colleagues to commit themselves to the aim of completing the process in time for the first candidates to enter before the European Parliamentary elections of 2004.

From then on, however, the meeting began to disintegrate, as the Presidency lost control. Many participants highlighted the malign impact of French domestic politics (see also George Ross' essay below). Prime Minister Lionel Jospin passed the buck to President Jacques Chirac: Chirac would never move unless he was convinced that Jospin was implicated: the French delegation as a whole spent much of the time holed up in their bunker afraid to leave for fear that anybody who did would lose out.

Prime responsibility for the disorderly proceedings, however, undoubtedly lay with Chirac. His misjudgments included: fixation with formal parity between Germany and the other three large states; the decision to give the Spaniards everything they wanted before the negotiations started, thereby destroying any rational basis for the reallocation of votes and skewing the arithmetic at every subsequent point in the proceedings; a serious underestimation of the determination of the small states to safeguard their position; and above all the apparent desire to be all things to all men. As one veteran observed: "This wasn't a negotiation at all. Chirac conceded ground whenever he was pressed. X doesn't like QMV in this article: delete it. Y wants this: let him have it."

The end of the meeting was entirely appropriate. Nobody knew what the final deal was, because the Presidency had shifted its ground so often.

3. The Treaty is nevertheless useful.
As far as the "Amsterdam leftovers" were concerned both the large and the small states could claim success. On the reweighing of votes, the current system which would have reduced the share of the six largest states from 55% to 42% in a Union of 27 was amended to give the large states just under 50%. This figure was nevertheless significantly lower than the 55% that the French Presidency proposed at the beginning of the proceedings, thanks to robust resistance by the small states led by Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres. In addition to a higher than expected share, the small states also secured acceptance of the principle that there can be no qualified majority which does not have the support of a majority of states.

Amongst the other "winners" in this part of the negotiation, which overshadowed everything else, are Germany, whose larger population was acknowledged through the introduction of the discretionary demographic criterion plus special treatment regarding the allocation of parliamentary seats; Spain, which got everything it wanted before the negotiations began; Poland, which thanks not least to loud offstage noises, rode in on Spain's coat tails; the Dutch, who now have one more vote than Belgium; and Luxembourg and therefore Cyprus, who were beneficiaries of a Portuguese move to ensure that Benelux had more votes than Spain.

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Obvious "losers" were Romania, which despite a population which is one third larger than the Netherlands' has only one extra vote; Malta, which is left in a category all of its own at the bottom of the list; and Latvia, Slovenia and Estonia, which are put on the same level as Cyprus and Luxembourg. The biggest losers of all, however, were Turkey and France, the former because, despite its candidate status, it does not figure at all on any list, and the latter, because by insisting on formal parity with Germany, it was forced to allow the introduction of a ...

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