EU: Government sources in Dublin were cautiously optimistic yesterday that agreement would be reached at this week's summit meeting in Brussels on the text of a Constitutional Treaty for Europe.
Germany, however, signalled yesterday that two issues remained a cause of concern. It rejects the proposal in the constitution draft to lengthen the discussion time for issues that fail to find agreement among member states as well as the idea to ignore member state abstentions in voting.
On a positive note, German sources said both Berlin and Paris would be prepared to "contemplate increases in the thresholds" for double majority voting, currently put at over half EU member states, representing at least 60 per cent of the bloc's population.
Senior officials in Dublin said that after the treaty negotiations had "run into the sand" last December, the Irish had "tried to encourage a sense of trust in our presidency".
There had been bilateral contacts with other EU governments "all the time" since January, with the Taoiseach "leading from the front" in the drive to secure agreement.
Mr Ahern's aim for the past three months in his tour of European capitals had been to settle as many issues as possible in advance of this week's summit. "We have made very significant, gradual progress in closing down the issues," a Government source said.
The range of issues remaining to be agreed had been "narrowed down very significantly". There was a "closed document" (No 7904) which contained all the issues that had been settled, or "more or less agreed", and an "open document" (No 8004), mainly dealing with institutional changes that had not been agreed.
However, the general feeling among member states appeared to be that "we were going in the right direction". Nevertheless, "very difficult" issues remained. The Irish presidency has taken the approach that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" and, as one senior official put it, "It's about power, but we are in as good shape as we possibly could be."
Unofficially, there is concern about the results of the European Parliament election in Britain and that Mr Blair is seen to be facing a hard task selling the treaty to an electorate with a growing Eurosceptic element.
German sources said they were confident the basis of discussions of vote-weighting would be the so-called double majority, however Berlin and Paris were "prepared to put aside" their original proposal for votes to be based on 50 per cent of the member states and 60 per cent of the population.
"But here there are absolute limits that cannot be crossed, our limit is 55/65," said a German government source. He warned that "voting chaos" would result if the proposal to ignore member state abstentions was adopted, as it would require majorities to be calculated ahead of each vote.
He also warned against the proposal to enable countries unhappy with proposals to extend the discussion time ahead of a vote on a compromise deal. He said it was an "awful" idea which would make "completely intransparent how decisions would be reached in the future".
Berlin says it has no interest in the proposed clause to prevent groups of smaller countries blocking legislation. The government source said the clause was of an "academic" nature and one Germany "can live without". However, it will not stand in the way of other countries with an interest in this area.
Germany has a neutral position on the issue of whether the constitution should refer to God or Europe's Christian tradition, the source said. German negotiators are pessimistic that agreement will be reached on the issue at the summit. However, the government source said: "We have not met anyone who has said the summit will fail on this issue."
