The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, has said that the failure of European leaders to agree an EU constitution last weekend was not a disaster for the Union.
Mr Straw said the enlargement of the EU next May would go ahead even though the constitution was not agreed. He said a period of reflection on how best to take the treaty negotiations forward was necessary.
The job of building a consensus on the new treaty would fall to the Irish presidency of the EU, "and possibly also for future presidencies", Mr Straw said. But he added that the Government was right to put economic reform on top of its agenda for the presidency.
Addressing the Institute of European Affairs in Dublin, he said breakdown in the negotiations in Brussels last Saturday was proof that the EU was not a distant superstate but an "organisation of sovereign member-states who have to reach agreements among themselves for the work of the union to go forward. I don't believe that the fact the EU couldn't reach an agreement last weekend was a function of size," he said.
"The real sticking point in Brussels last weekend was of course the issue of the relative weight in voting terms which each country will have after enlargement - the same issue on which negotiations at Nice three years ago almost floundered."
He said Britain was content with arrangements in the Nice treaty, which gave Poland and Spain a much greater number of votes than would have been merited based on population size. This was strongly opposed by Germany at the talks last weekend.
However, Mr Straw said Britain would back an alternative if a consensus of EU members backed it.
This was rejected by the chairman of the institute, Mr Brendan Halligan, who praised Poland and Spain for "holding out as they did" and said that the spirit of the EU rested on a passionate commitment to qualified majority voting.
Mr Straw said that no state was better placed than Ireland to push economic reforms forward.
Responding to questions after his speech, Mr Straw said the failure to reform economies would leave states such as Ireland and Britain growing at the pace of the slowest economies in the EU.
He strongly supported efforts to retain the veto on taxation measures because a uniform tax rate would not encourage competitive dynamic between EU members.
"Ireland boasts the kind of dynamic knowledge-based economy Europe needs. Irish business has shown the capacity to innovate and to challenge received wisdom which is essential to staying competitive," he said.
"Of course membership of the EU and access to EU funding have helped make Ireland successful." But several countries got similar levels of EU funding to Ireland "and none used them to such advantage".
