British officials were delighted when the call for majority voting on tax and social security clauses was dropped in last night's final draft document, designed to lead to a Treaty of Nice to be signed next year. The tax issue is not dead, however. It will be discussed in 2004 when a future inter-governmental conference, capable of reforming the treaty, has been agreed. The prime minister accepted as part of the round of negotiations in four years' time a review of the controversial charter of fundamental rights, but only on the condition that the process would not delay enlargement. Among the areas where member states agreed to lose national vetoes in favour of qualified majority voting were those Whitehall wants, including free movement of professionals such as lawyers and engineers within the EU, reforms of the EU court and budget reforms needed as part of Neil Kinnock's clean-up portfolio.
Every issue is highly complex, with new draft proposals emerging every few hours.
Shorn of their detail, the disagreements are about how power will be distributed after the union enlarges to 27 or 28 countries within 10 years. Diplomats and leaders from the 15 current EU members were braced for another long night of talks with some predicting the meeting might not end until tomorrow night. Others were not ruling out total breakdown. Extraordinarily, it is now looking like we will have a treaty which will make enlargement no less easy and maybe more difficult.