Prime Minister Drnovšek today appeared at the second session of the “Aspen European Dialogue” international conference, taking place in Cernobbio, Italy. The session focused on issues relating to reforms in European government and institutions. The session was led by Mario Monti, the EU Commissioner for Competition. Participating alongside the Slovenian Prime Minister were Vaclav Klaus, the speaker of the Czech parliament, Carl Bildt, the UN Secretary General’s special envoy to the Balkans and Enrico Letti, the Italian minister for trade and industry.

Prime Minister Drnovšek took the opportunity to stress that as prime minister of one the EU candidate countries he had been following the issues relating to the government of Europe for the last ten years. He said that the more the enlargement of the EU was discussed, the more one heard of the issue of Europe’s institutional capacity to engage with new challenges and to operate effectively. He recalled last December’s summit in Nice, which provided an adequate framework for the continued process of European integration and the establishment of mechanisms to improve efficiency. Of course this raised the question of whether these mechanisms were adequate for the future, however much they might suffice for today’s challenges and the current needs of the enlargement process.

According to Prime Minister Drnovšek some of the most important dilemmas facing the EU are the issues of representation of member states, decision-making methods, particularly in the Council of Ministers and the extension of qualified majority voting. On this matter he drew attention to experiences at Nice, where all the difficulties relating to institutional changes were revealed during negotiations on the wording of the treaty, which continued until the very last minute. In of itself that is hardly surprising, given that it concerns EU member states who are also sovereign states gradually transferring part of their sovereignty to supranational structures. However, that process will probably not become any quicker or easier in the future.

Prime Minister Drnovšek recalled that the current debate on the EU’s future began after the Nice summit. It centres on the question of whether the EU will be a federation or something looser or in other words, whether the EU will continue in its current state or not. In this sense the recent unofficial comments of Germany’s Chancellor Schröder on the future structure of the EU suggested a radical change. The federation proposed by the German chancellor would certainly ensure the efficient operation of the EU, which would be comparable to the USA, but such a solution is not realistic in the near future. According to Dr Drnovšek such a process must take place gradually to avoid any anti-European reactions. Nevertheless, the unofficial proposal of the German chancellor will probably be presented officially and some kind of compromise to this proposal reached. However, one should not expect a federation to come from this, which means that the current system of intergovernmental decision-making will probably continue. In this regard Dr Drnovšek expressed the hope that the European Commission and European Parliament will receive greater powers, as the intergovernmental method of decision-making is not transparent and is unclear and unpredictable, allowing a lot of “horse-trading” to go on in the background. This is one of the reasons governments have been reluctant for many years to give up the system. Precisely for this reason it is important for Slovenia, as a smaller country, to see a transition to a more powerful European Commission.

Prime Minister Drnovšek warned that sometimes discussions on the future of the EU were brought into the discussion on its enlargement, as if to say that new members would render the current system of decision-making impossible. Dr Drnovšek cast doubt on whether there would be a noticeable difference in decision-making between 15 or 27 countries and at the same time expressed the fear that this argument could slow down the enlargement process. He warned that this would be extremely negative as a slowdown would affect candidate countries very badly and encourage the growth of euroscepticism. He closed his contribution by expressing the hope that the member states and candidate states would successfully continue with the enlargement process, which has been ongoing for at least a decade and take it to its conclusion.