Agreement at marathon summit paves way for EU expansion

In this story: Agreement will streamline voting system Some concessions Chirac pressed to produce summit treaty RELATED STORIES, SITES

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NICE, France -- European Union leaders on Monday achieved agreement on a series of reforms to prepare the 15-member bloc for expansion into Eastern Europe, ending a five-day marathon conference that had been suspended earlier in the day.

Weary delegates hammered out the treaty late into the night, finally announcing an agreement around 4:30 a.m. Monday.

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Most areas had been ironed out by midnight, but leaders were stuck on the issue of voting parity for smaller EU nations.

French President Jacques Chirac said the summit would be remembered as one of Europe's greatest successes "because of the extent of the complexity of the problems that have been settled."

Believing a deal was close at hand, Chirac had pushed countries to press ahead to reach an agreement. At a news conference following the deal, he said "substantial progress" was made.

Agreement will streamline voting system

The treaty will streamline the voting system inside the European Union's Council of Ministers, a relic of the 1950s, when only six EU countries existed.

Details of the agreement on redistributing voting among member states, the last sticking point, were not immediately available.

Belgium, the last country to resist a compromise proposal from France, had vetoed earlier Monday a French proposal that would have meant the EU's four largest members would have had one fewer vote in the council, while the smaller members would have received an extra vote.

EU diplomats said Belgium rejected the proposal in protest against the Netherlands, which would have received an additional vote in the council. The Netherlands' population is 50 percent larger than Belgium's.

The summit, the longest EU conference on record, had been scheduled to end around noon Saturday.

Some concessions

While the EU leaders earlier agreed on several aspects of reform, several small countries -- key among them Portugal -- vetoed a plan to reallocate votes to member states as proposed by France, which holds the EU presidency.

"The Portuguese delegation has told the French presidency very clearly that the moment of truth has arrived," Francisco Seixas da Costa, Portugal's state secretary for European affairs, said after 14 hours of negotiations on Sunday.

"Without a change in the position of the presidency, an agreement cannot be reached," he had said.

The revised proposal France presented earlier on Monday would have given Germany, France, Italy and Britain 29 votes in the council; Spain, 27 votes; the Netherlands, 13. Greece, Belgium and Portugal would have received 12 votes -- one more than an earlier French proposal had given them.

Meanwhile, Sweden and Austria would have had 10 votes. Finland, Denmark and Ireland would have received seven votes each, and Luxembourg would have had four. Among the candidates for EU membership, the votes would have ranged from 27 for Poland to three for Malta.

Over the weekend, officials conceded that the 15 countries faced the possibility of reaching an agreement in principle, without signing a detailed treaty.

But Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said: "These are difficult questions that will determine the future of Europe. It doesn't matter if you take one or two days more."

Dick Benschop, the Netherlands foreign minister, had said, "The differences of opinion are large."

The French had tried to make concessions to smaller countries who felt they were being squeezed in the battle over how to weight national votes and slim down the European Commission, the EU executive.

But some small countries still feel aggrieved.

On the move to end national vetoes over key policy areas the British, backed by Sweden and Ireland, are refusing to compromise over taxation policy.

Tussles are also continuing over the possible introduction of Qualified Majority Voting on social security for EU nationals working in other member states, asylum and immigration policy, subsidies to poorer regions and trade in financial services.

Chirac pressed to produce summit treaty

President Chirac, the man under pressure to produce a result in Nice, on Sunday gave his fellow leaders a third set of documents setting out possible ways forward on the contentious issues.

On the European Commission, the French Presidency document proposed that from 2005 the Commission should consist of one commissioner from each member state -- which by then could number up to 21.

In the current 15-member bloc France, Germany, Italy, the UK and Spain have two commissioners each.

But the key decision would be postponed with agreement on the future size of the Commission only when the Union reaches 27 states.

All that would be agreed in Nice is that there would be fewer than 27 members, with countries rotating in their membership.

On the weighting of national votes, the French have set out a table which ignores a call from Germany for extra votes to reflect its 20 million larger population.

Following protests from the Netherlands, who wanted more votes to reflect the fact they have half as many citizens again as Belgium -- currently with the same votes -- the revised table gave them just one extra vote.

The latest proposal also gave Spain, which had been demanding parity, 28 votes compared to the 30 for the big four -- France, Germany, Italy and the UK.

In a clear bid to win over Germany, the French also proposed a significant proportionate increase in the number of German members in the European Parliament.

Initially the French Presidency document made no provision for a further IGC (Inter Governmental Conference) in 2004. The Germans and Italians wanted this to define the relationship between Brussels and the European nation states. But later they won their case. The Presidency backed a declaration calling for yet another look at the EU constitution in 2004.

The strains of the negotiation had been showing.

There have been accusations from some other delegations that the French Presidency is proving to be "more French than Presidency."

Jaime Gama, the Portuguese Foreign Minister, said that the initial French Presidency proposals were "humiliating" for smaller nations.

The Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis had opposed the plans for re-weighting of national votes "because it is clear it represents an effort to create a directorate of big countries."

CNN Brussels Bureau Chief Patricia Kelly, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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