BRUXELLES – There is a “European reflux” after Biarritz, Romano Prodi notes with bitterness. Passed by the heads of government to the diplomats, the negotiation between the fifteen countries of the EU to strengthen the common institutions “seems to take steps backwards”. This is the case, for example, with regard to the extension of the majority vote: there were “encouraging steps forward” at the summit held in the French Basque country but now “special interests and divergent positions are emerging that make research difficult and complicated of solutions “. There is a general agreement to abolish the right of veto in some thirty sectors but there are differences in “essential and sensitive” fields such as taxation, immigration policy, structural funds, foreign trade. Prodi, who had Commissioner Michel Barnier at his side, charged with following the Commission’s negotiation between the Fifteen, appealed to the governments to make “every effort” in the forty days that separate us from the summit in Nice so that we can ” to abolish the right of veto as widely as possible, this ball and chain for the effectiveness of European action “. Prodi expressed satisfaction at the fact that the Italian-German proposal on “enhanced cooperation”, ie the possibility of launching new forms of cooperation even without the support of all partners, remains the basis of the negotiations on this chapter. It is indeed the proposal that comes closest to the ideas presented by the Commission itself and that better preserves the current institutional balance. As for the redefinition of the weight of each country in the votes of the Council of the Fifteen, Prodi and the European Commission suggest adopting “a simple and clear system” that is easily understandable and not “based on square roots because it is difficult to mobilize citizens on a square root “. There is talk here of the difficult way of “weighing” the vote of each country so that, while not crushing the “small”, the “great” is assigned a relative weight that takes into account the number of their inhabitants. Italy has presented a proposal that assigns each major country 33 votes and less to the others, to scale according to the population. A proposal that, according to Prodi, does not have “the gift of clarity and simplicity”. The Commission suggests a double majority mechanism: a provision is adopted when it has the support of a majority of Member States representing more than half of the European population.