NICE, France — European Union leaders approved measures to fight mad cow disease and create an EU military force on Friday, then dived into what was expected to be a long, difficult debate on reshaping the EU for enlargement.
No issue facing the EU today is more difficult than reforming its institutions and streamlining its decision-making process to make the cumbersome apparatus in Brussels function when the organization balloons from 15 to 27 or more members.
Candidate nations, which range from the Baltics through Eastern Europe to Turkey, are working frantically to prepare themselves for EU membership, but they are also waiting for the EU to prepare itself for the new members.
"It is the most important challenge facing the European Union today," said Javier Solana, the EU's chief of foreign and security policy. "I have no doubt there will be an agreement . . . that opens the doors of the EU to new countries."
The second day of the Nice summit was much calmer than the first, when 20 police officers were injured in street battles with several thousand protesters. Some 45 people were detained. The streets of this Mediterranean resort were calm Friday except for a few dozen demonstrators, some supporting Kurds, others opposing cloning.
The EU leaders had a first go at the reform issues at a dinner Thursday that lasted nearly until midnight. Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok said that "the atmosphere was somewhat explosive."
"It will be very difficult," he said. "Can it fail? Yes, it can."
Before the leaders got to that, however, they approved plans set up earlier this week by agriculture ministers to stem the threat of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. The discovery of more cases of the brain-wasting disease has caused near panic in some countries by people who fear catching the human form of the illness, known as Creutzfeld-Jakob disease.
On Monday, the EU ordered a six-month ban on almost all animal products in cattle feed, seen as the main vehicle for transmitting the illness. Pierre Moscovici, France's minister for European affairs, said the leaders officially adopted the ban.
"There is no opposition in principal to going further but for the moment that is what was decided," said Moscovici, referring to those who wanted a permanent ban.
The 15 leaders also approved EU plans to create its own 60,000-man rapid-reaction corps force separate from NATO and establishing permanent political and military bodies required to run it. That force is to be ready by 2003.
The 15-nation EU wants an autonomous capacity to make military decisions and, where NATO as a whole is not engaged, conduct EU-led military operations. At the same time, NATO is in the process of a wide-ranging effort to upgrade its forces to deal with post-Cold War threats, and the alliance says if Europe's new military efforts complement obligations to NATO, the EU plans are positive.
EU leaders nonetheless sought to quell any fears that an autonomous EU force could be detrimental to NATO.
"No one in Europe is in any way questioning the importance or the status of the Atlantic alliance," said French President Jacques Chirac.
He said if Europe feels the need to take military action without the Americans, it must have the ability to do so.
"The idea is to strengthen the alliance," Chirac said. "There is no reason to be concerned. Europe is going to make its own contribution to its own security."
The leaders have until Sunday to agree on the most sweeping overhaul of the union's decisionmaking machinery in decades. It won't be easy.
Germany and France are split over the number of votes each will wield in deciding EU policies; Britain is determined to hold on to its power to block legislation; smaller nations want to make sure their rights are protected.
Moscovici said the leaders want to be able to welcome new members to the EU by 2004.
"It's not a commitment," he said. "We hope it will be possible that new countries will be able to participate in the (European Parliament) elections of 2004."
Leaders making their way to the summit Thursday were met by tear gas as riot police battled 4,000 demonstrators who created the sort of street turmoil that has become a familiar backdrop to international gatherings since the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle a year ago.
The rock-throwing vanguard of rioters — anarchists and communists from Europe and separatists from Spain's Basque country — got within a block of the summit venue.