Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Northern Ireland and European Constitution.
Northern Ireland
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) advised journalists that the Prime Minister would be meeting the Rev Ian Paisley and other DUP representatives in Downing Street tomorrow morning. He would also be seeing the other parties on Wednesday afternoon, together with the Taoiseach. We had hoped that all the meetings would take place on the same day, but people’s diaries had not coincided. In answer to questions, the PMOS said that following the elections in Northern Ireland at the end of last month, we were in listening mode and wanted to discuss how we could move things forward with the parties.
European Constitution
Asked if it was fair to say that the European Constitution would be kicked into touch until 2009, the PMOS said no. The Prime Minister had just made a Statement to the Commons on the discussions at the European Council at the weekend and that wasn’t what he had said at all. No one was denying there was a wide gap between the Franco-German position and the Spanish-Polish position on the issue of vote weighting. Obviously, it was going to take a bit of time to work through the outstanding issues. No one was giving any guarantees that they would be addressed or resolved during the Irish Presidency in the first half of 2004. It was unlikely. We would have to wait and see how things panned out after that. Asked if the Prime Minister had abandoned the view that there could be no enlargement without a new constitution, the PMOS said that a constitution and the changes that would be made would enable an enlarged EU to work more effectively. The reason why things could continue as they were for the moment, and that there wasn’t any great urgency, was because of the Nice agreement which allowed for enlargement but under the vote weighting system which had been agreed at the time. In theory that could continue until 2009. Asked if the Prime Minister now hoped to reach an agreement on everything - bar the issue of vote weighting which would be dealt with another time, the PMOS said that as the Prime Minister had underlined in his press conference, we would hope to bank what had been agreed because the Presidency’s conclusions were a very good deal for the British national interest and our red lines. However, under the terms of the IGC, nothing was agreed until everything was agreed and all the issues had been resolved. Self-evidently, that was not the case, hence there had been no agreement.
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