Mr President, it is quite clear from discussions that everyone wants to finish in December. The problem is that everyone wants to make their concessions at the last possible minute - and preferably not at all. So there is a danger that despite a general willingness to conclude at the December European Council, we end up, as in Nice, with it going on long into the night with last-minute deals cobbled together. There is a danger that no agreement will be reached at all. At the moment, Member States to a degree are still posturing. They are taking rigid and firm positions even though they know they will have to compromise if they want to succeed in December: therein lies the biggest danger facing the Intergovernmental Conference. I am convinced that a reasonable, acceptable deal can be found on the bulk of the points, but there is one that seems to be extraordinarily difficult: the system of voting in the Council. The Convention wrestled with the age-old problem of whether we want equality of states or equality of citizens. It came up with the novel and balanced solution of the double majority, with one vote every state counts equally, and with the other vote states are weighted according to their population: absolute equality of citizens. What could be fairer? Poland, Spain and some other countries, however, are insisting on returning to the opaque Nice formula, which is neither very fair nor very logical. I regret this, and I hope that they will shift their position. I know too from discussions - notably with Polish colleagues - how difficult the national context in Poland is and how this has regrettably become a cause célèbre, notably for opposition parties - Poland has a minority government. But how can we compromise, how can we find a way out between two radically different solutions? Speaking purely personally, and off the top of my head, may I invite the Italian presidency to look at what happened in the early 1990s, before enlargement to Sweden, Finland and Austria? There was then a big row in the Council about adapting the qualified majority system, then it was about the threshold: what threshold is needed to obtain a qualified majority and what is a blocking minority? At the time, one state - regrettably and shamefully my own, the United Kingdom - refused to change the system. It wanted to keep the same blocking minority in an enlarged Union, which would have made decision-taking even more difficult. There was deadlock. What happened, in your own country Mr President? At Ioannina, a compromise was reached the so-called 'Ioannina compromise' whereby the Union switched to the new system, but a declaration was adopted saying that in the future, states that were in the minority, but which would not have been outvoted under the old system could, if they wished, then object to the decision and insist that discussions continue. In practice, that clause was never used but it enabled face to be saved at the time, it enabled the transition to the new system and perhaps something along those lines is the only way forward on this very difficult point of the double majority. Perhaps we should switch to the new system, but with a declaration allowing states perhaps for a transitional period to invoke the old system if they found themselves in the minority. I am sure they would not do this very often, but it would allow them now to save face and go home with an acceptable solution.

Political group: PSE