Foreign Minister Tuomioja wants only short time-out on EU Constitution

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Finland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Erkki Tuomioja says that the time-out called in the process aimed at establishing a constitution for the European Union should not be extended beyond next year.
      According to Tuomioja, EU leaders should decide today or Friday when to resume work on the constitution, which was recently rejected by the voters of France and The Netherlands.
      The Finnish government is planning to proceed with its ratification process, unless the EU countries make a joint decision to bury the law in its present form.
     
"We will nevertheless bring into Parliament an assessment of the content of the constitutional treaty and its differences in relation to existing treaties. I believe that this would also be important from the point of view of national debate, because when talking about the constitution, people have very easily taken a stand both on the content of the agreement, as well as on questions that it does not contain."
      It suits Finland’s purposes well, that there would be no decisions made on the future of the constitution until the second half of 2006, when Finland holds the EU Presidency - even though the government does not especially relish the prospect of such a mediation task.
      Tuomioja believes that the greatest net contributors to the EU would be willing to relax their purse strings and pay more into the EU coffers than they have previously suggested.
     
The largest net contributors to the EU have called for a maximum contribution of one percent of GDP. The proposal by the current presidency-holder Luxembourg has been 1.06%.
      Tuomioja says that he believes that most member states are willing to reach this level.
      For Finland, a 1.06% membership due would be acceptable if the EU funding for the development of agriculture in Eastern and Northern Finland is not cut too much. Finland currently pays EUR 120 million a year more into the EU budget than it gets back in subsidies.
      In the future, the gap is expected to grow, as new member states are accepted. Tuomioja says that the government’s goal is to keep the gap at 0.2-0.3% of GDP, which means that as of 2007 Finland would pay no more than EUR 400-500 million more in membership dues than it gets back in EU subsidies.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish and Swedish ministers agree - EU budget agreement unlikely at Brussels summit (15.6.2005)

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