Delors delivers 'wake-up call' on EU integration

Jacques Delors, the former president of the European Commission, said yesterday that without more integration led by key member states, the EU would grind "to a halt".

In a paper launched ahead of a European summit on Friday, Mr Delors revived the idea of an "avant-garde" of countries pursuing integration quicker than others, a notion that will alarm sceptics in Britain.

The document is of political importance because Mr Delors, and two of its other signatories -- the former Italian and Belgian premiers, Guiliano Amato and Jean-Luc Deheane -- sit on a small committee of experts advising Guy Verhofstadt, the Prime Minister of Belgium, who holds the presidency of the EU. Their conclusions will help shape the agenda for the EU's next round of reform, for which preparations will begin after the Laeken summit in two months.

Those who endorsed yesterday's document also include Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, a former president of the European Commission and one-time confidant of Tony Blair, Germany's ex-chancellors, Helmut Kohl and Helmut Schmidt, the former Spanish leader Felipe Gonzalez and Etienne Davignon, Belgium's former European commissioner.

The document, entitled "A Wake-up Call for Europe" defends the traditional method of European law-making with the Commission as the initiator of legislation, and calls for greater use of majority voting when the EU enlarges. Other ideas include linking the composition of the European Commission, and the political affiliation of its president, to the outcome of European elections, and giving the European Parliament more powers over the EU budget.

Despite the advent of the euro and moves to create a EU rapid reaction force, Mr Delors' group is worried about the loss of political support.

"For a number of years the EU has been losing momentum," says the document, "and it is suffering from a loss of identity because of the lack of any common political project beyond that of enlargement." It concludes that the "real danger for Europe now is that everything may come to a halt", and that "the whole construction of Europe is based on a continuous transition towards greater European integration".

That, the paper argues, includes a "common platform for fiscal matters and social policy" and integrated legal systems. The intervention comes at a point when much of the Delors agenda of ever closer union is in retreat, with power moving increasingly to the Council of Ministers, the body that represents the EU member states, and more intergovernmental decision-making.

The Delors document also backs one of the central objectives of the 2004 treaty change, that the EU's powers be clearly defined, so citizens know where decisions are taken.