Nice treaty holds key to EU enlargement

The Nice Treaty, meant to adapt European Union institutions for the bloc's enlargement to up to 27 members, comes into effect early next year after Irish voters endorsed it last month.

The Irish voted in a second referendum on October 19 to back the complex treaty after rejecting the same document in a first ballot in June 2001 on a low turnout.

The other 14 EU member states and the European Parliament had already ratified the treaty, which was negotiated at a marathon summit in the French Riviera town of Nice in December 2000.

The treaty aims to ease decision-making and avert gridlock in an enlarged EU by reforming institutions and processes originally devised for a Union of just six members.

Here are the key elements of the Nice Treaty:

¤ Extends QMV in the EU's policy-making Council of Ministers to 29 policy areas that previously required unanimity.

¤ Extends QMV to decisions on aid to poorer regions from 2007, after the next six-year EU budget is adopted.

¤ Does not extend QMV to politically sensitive areas such as tax, social security, immigration, foreign policy or defence.

¤ Reweights votes of member states in Council of Ministers as follows (figures in brackets show current voting strength, asterisk denotes candidate country with no votes at present):

Germany, France, Britain and Italy will each have 29 votes (10). Spain (8) and Poland (*) will each have 27 votes. Romania (*) will have 15 votes. The Netherlands (5) gets 13. Greece (5), the Czech Republic (*), Belgium (5), Hungary (*) and Portugal (5) will each have 12. Sweden (4), Bulgaria (*) and Austria (4) each get 10. Slovakia (*), Denmark (3), Finland (3), Ireland (3) and Lithuania (*) will have seven each. Latvia (*), Slovenia (*), Estonia (*), Cyprus (*) and Luxembourg (2) will have four. Malta (*) will have three.

In 2005, the big countries - Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain - will lose their second commissioner.

¤ Each new entrant will have one commissioner until there are 27 EU member states. Then leaders will set a permanent cap on the size of the Brussels-based executive of fewer than 27.

¤ Once the ceiling has been fixed, Commission seats will be filled by rotation among member states.

¤ The powers of the Commission president will be strengthened, with the ability to fire individual commissioners.

¤ Agreement that groups of eight or more states can push ahead with closer integration in chosen areas, provided other states are free to join them at a later date.

¤ Leaders simplified the mechanisms to deal with a member state suspected of deviating from core European values of democracy and human rights. One third of members may request monitoring, which would be triggered if EU ministers vote by a four-fifths majority.

¤ Leaders approved plans for an EU defence initiative including a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force that would give the EU access to Nato assets for crisis management operations where the alliance as a whole was not involved.

¤ Ireland won a declaration from other member states at a summit in Spain in June 2002 saying Dublin could not be forced to participate in EU military actions. This move reflected the government's belief that many voters rejected the treaty first time round because they feared it undermined Irish neutrality.