FM Says Time Is Short for Agreement on New EU Contract
Slovenia's Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said on Friday that talks on the new EU treaty were getting close to a solution, but pointed to potential difficulties in the ratification process and the lack of time.
"The schedule is tight, we need to arrive at a conclusion in 2008 in order to catch the 2009 [European Parliament] election," Rupel said at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Portugal's Viana Do Castelo.
Rupel also pointed to the opposition of some countries, such as the UK and Poland, to include a common Charter of Fundamental Rights into the treaty. The ministers have discussed a proposal to declare the charter before declaring the treaty and then include a link between the two documents in the treaty. Such a compromise could be acceptable, he said.
The meeting's host, Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado, stressed that all the ministers pledged they would try and reach an agreement on the reform treaty as soon as possible.
According to Amado, the ministers confirmed the timetable, agreed on in July, that envisages the deal on the final wording to be reached at the European Council meeting on 18 and 19 October in Lisbon.
The reform treaty is slated to replace the defunct EU Constitution, which was rejected at referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005. The treaty is aimed at improving the way the EU operates.
The two-day informal meeting will conclude tomorrow.
Rupel also said that the next informal meeting of the ministers - termed Gymnich after the castle near Bonn in Gemany where the first such meeting was held in 1974 - would take place in Slovenia in late March.
The meeting is to be held at the protocolary complex at Brdo pri Kranju, some 30 kilometres NW from Ljubljana. "The Gymnich meetings are informal meetings, aimed at allowing the ministers to speak more freely", as not every word they say is written down, the minister said. According to Rupel, the meeting will also present an opportunity for the ministers to get to know Slovenia a bit more. "We will take them by helicopter to Slovenia's coast," the minister said.
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