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                                ON THE RECORD 
 
                          LEO TINDEMANS INTERVIEW
 
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1                                  DATE: 20.3.94 
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JOHN HUMPHRYS:                         So the view from the Council of 
Ministers there.  But whatever they decide on Tuesday it will not be the end 
of the matter. Their decision must be ratified by the European Parliament. Not 
just by the majority of MPs voting but by a majority of ALL members of the 
Parliament. The Tory Party of course is allied with the European People's Party 
and its support is essential if the deal is to go through. The President of the 
EPP in the European Parliament is Leo Tindemans, who's former Prime Minister 
of Belgium. 
 
                                       Would the EPP, Mr Tindemans, be prepared 
to - as I've just been discussing there - to separate these two processes.  
That's to say: the enlargement and qualified majority voting? 
 
LEO TINDEMANS:                         Well, it's very difficult to give you a 
straightforward answer because the question was not discussed in my group, nor 
was there any vote in the group.  But, I attended the meetings of the Group 
Chairman and I know what is living (sic) into my group.  We had already 
exchanges of views, of course and we consider Twenty-Three as the existing 
rule if the Community is enlarged, if the union is enlarged.  The rule must be 
adapted to the new number of member states. 
 
                                       So, if Britain is against that 
adaptation - that arithmetic adaptation - it's asking for a modification of the 
existing rules and that, I fear, will never be accepted by Parliament. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, you've just heard that some sort 
of compromise might well be accepted by the Council of Ministers.  Does that 
sound sensible to you? 
 
TINDEMANS:                             Well, I can only tell you that all the 
serious Group Chairmen agreed upon the following position: if Twenty-Seven is 
not accepted on a total of ninety points, in a union with sixteen members, that 
would mean an institutional backwards movement and that is not acceptable.  
This was said by all these group leaders.  So, I fear - as I've just told you - 
that that will never come through Parliament.  That it will never be.  And you 
know we need a serious majority - two hundred and sixty, at least must say 
Yes.  Otherwise, there is no enlargement.  This is the new competence of the 
European Parliament...since Maastricht so I fear that majority will never be 
obtained if it is not Twenty-Seven. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              So, you're putting the Council 
of Ministers (who are going to be meeting on Tuesday) on notice, as it were, 
and you're saying to them:  forget about compromise, forget about the sort of 
fudge that we've seen historically over the years, you've got to stick to 
Twenty-Seven and that's that. 
 
TINDEMANS:                             Well, we cannot understand that there is 
a quarrel about these figures of twenty-three or twenty-seven because it has 
nothing to do with institutional reforms.  We were asking for deepening before 
widening.  You know the expressions.  If the Council envisaged a widening of 
the union, we ask it first to reform the existing institutions.  It was 
accepted at the beginning but after a short time, it was said widening and 
deepening must take place simultaneously, and now we are going to a widening 
without adaptation of the institutions. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Right.  So... 
 
TINDEMANS:                             And Great Britain wants to modify the 
existing rules.  You can see my opinion is in Parliament there will be no 
majority for such a position. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Not even if they come out with the sort 
of compromise that Mr Helveg Petersen has just been talking about.  That's 
to say some sort of cooling off period?  
 
TINDEMANS:                             Well, I can only give you my impression 
at this moment.  My very profound feeling -  what is living (sic) in the 
European Parliament in the serious political groups, at this moment.  My answer 
to your question is: no, even not with a compromise because, as I told you, it 
is considered as a very small detail and the complaint is: where are the 
proposals?  Everything is delayed until '96 and that is creating also a very 
serious frustration into the European Parliament. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              So you're basically saying to Mr 
Hurd: there's no point in getting on that 'plane to Brussels? 
 
TINDEMANS:                             Well, you never know, in diplomacy what 
the result of a discussion and a negotiation can be but I am giving you, at 
this moment, what I found in the European Parliament last week and the week 
before. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Mr Tindemans, thank you very much for 
joining us. 
 
 
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