Santer strikes upbeat note for Madrid summit

Date: 30/11/1995

MADRID will provide the EU with the perfect opportunity to wrong-foot the prophets of doom, European Commission President Jacques Santer forecast this week as he prepared for the mid-December EU summit.

Facing Union leaders at their two-day meeting are a series of pivotal issues which will set out the Union's strategy up to the turn of the century. As he contemplated the decisions ahead, Santer offered some words of advice to the summiteers.

“I hope the European Council in Madrid will adopt the motto of acting less, but doing more. I hope it will draw up conclusions that will end the uncertainty and show that the Union is on track,” he said in a pre-summit press conference in Brussels yesterday (29 November).

Santer is emulating the summit's host, Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and conducting a whistle-stop tour of European capitals as final preparations are made for what is widely seen as one of the most significant summits in recent years.

After talks this week with French Prime Minister Alain Juppé in Paris and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Bonn, Santer plans to see French President Jacques Chirac on 6 December - the day before a strategy meeting between the French and German leaders.

The Commission has prepared more than a dozen position papers for EU leaders, all of which were requested by previous summits. But Santer believes that apart from the ever-present problem of employment and competitiveness, the two-day meeting will have to take a clear stance on just three issues.

First, it needs to give the green light to the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on the Maastricht Treaty. Unlike some other participants, the Commission is clear that the IGC must lead to fundamental reforms and clearly establish the nature of the new Union.

“The IGC cannot be a minimalist exercise. It must help ensure the success of enlargement. A substantial review is required to make it easier to take decisions. The IGC must give the Union a clear political, economic and even military identity,” Santer insists.

In contrast to the doubts expressed in some quarters, Santer was equally bullish about the Union's ability to hit its target of introducing a single currency.

“The European summit will give the lie to all those who prophesise doom and the failure of Europe. On 1 January 1999, there will be a single currency. To achieve that, the European Council will have to decide on the scenario and the name and mark the irreversibility of the project,” he said.

In Santer's view, the third central summit issue - enlargement - would determine the future of the Union. It was necessary to have a clear view of what the EU would be like in its enlarged form. Five applications are already on the table and another seven are expected in the coming years.

Santer refused to commit himself to a starting date for negotiations, although with leaders from the applicant countries present in Madrid, the summit will face emotional pressure to indicate some sort of timetable.

For the first time, EU leaders will be faced with specialised reports giving some indication of the impact on existing Union policies of an expansion eastwards. Further details are expected to emerge next year, analysing the road to be travelled and the progress made by the applicants.

Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek gave some indication this week of the mountains to be climbed when he said the combined income of the ten potential Central and Eastern European members was just 4&percent; of that of the current Union.

Put another way, it was equivalent to the Gross Domestic Product of his native country, the Netherlands.

Of the many sectoral analyses being conducted into the impact of enlargement, the study into agricultural costs is the most advanced.

Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler this week slightly reduced earlier forecasts and predicted that to extend the Common Agricultural Policy, as it now stood, to ten Central and Eastern European countries in the year 2000 would add 9 billion ecu to a projected farm budget of 42 billion ecu. By 2010, the extra cost would be an annual 12 billion ecu.