Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi is expected to “insist” tomorrow that an agreement is sealed on the new EU Reform Treaty to include a minimum of six European Parliament seats for Malta, as Italy is pushing for the new treaty to be approved without any agreement on the new allocation of MEP seats.
On Monday at a General Affairs council meeting in Luxembourg held in preparation for tomorrow’s EU summit in Lisbon, Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema suggested postponing the allocation of seats for a later date.
But the Maltese MP in the Italian Parliament Arnold Cassola yesterday told MaltaToday that Italian MP Sandro Gozi, one of the closest advisors to the Prodi government, had told him that the Maltese and Italian delegations had met on the issue and “cleared the air”.
According to Gozi, Italian prime minister Romano Prodi never declared his outright opposition to six seats going to Malta, Cassola said. Gozi was reported to have said the report in Il Giornale, which reported Prodi’s “no” to Malta’s six seats as being incompatible with its size, was erroneous.
But both D’Alema and Prodi said they are in disagreement over the allocation of seats as approved by the European Parliament with respect to a decrease in Italian MEPs. “If a solution is not found, Italy will not be in a position to give its assent to the treaty. However, a compromise can be found if we agree that the treaty and the issue of the allocation of seats are separated,” D’Alema said.
At the meeting, Malta’s Permanent Representative Richard Cachia Caruana recalled the Maltese Prime Minister’s intervention at the June 2007 European Council, stating that the agreement on the reconstitution of the European Parliament forms an integral part of the overall package of the Reform Treaty.
The agreement on the distribution of MEP seats has to be adopted as part of the Reform Treaty. The minimum and maximum threshold, set at 6 and 96 seats respectively, was upheld both in the 2007 intergovernmental conference mandate and also by the European Parliament.
The Office of the Prime Minister yesterday said Malta will tomorrow insist this agreement is respected. Gonzi has the right to veto any final agreement on the Treaty if Malta does not get its sixth seat, although yesterday the Prime Minister did not comment on this option.
Romano Prodi last week was quoted by the Berlusconi-owned Il Giornale that he couldn’t understand how Malta could get an allocation of six seats, “the same as Slovenia”.
Italy is opposing the agreed distribution of European Parliament seats after the 2009 election because it will lose six seats when compared to the present situation. Italy will lose its pairing with France and the UK with fewer seats.
The agreement on the new treaty requires a unanimous vote of all 27 member states.

mvella@mediatoday.com.mt