Timely boost to EU morale

Date: 16/11/1995

By Fiona McHugh

THE EU's top three leaders used the first ever state of the Union debate in the European Parliament to boost confidence in the Union's work and dispel the clouds which have gathered over the single currency project recently.

In a show of solidarity, Commission President Jacques Santer, European Parliament President Klaus Hänsch and current European Council President Felipe Gonzalez together took stock of the EU's work and set common goals for the years to come.

With the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) fast approaching, the event was timely, giving Euro MPs and EU leaders normally caught up in day-to-day affairs time to reflect on loftier matters.

But it was not just to the future that they looked. As if by consensus, all three used morale-boosting speeches to chalk up the Union's successes before moving on to the trickier business of dealing with potentially explosive problems looming on the horizon.

Seeking to deflect the barrage of criticism directed at the Union over the past few years, Santer told a half-full house that “we should not forget what we have achieved”.

Throwing down the gauntlet to the Union's detractors, he added: “I challenge those who enjoy knitting around the guillotine.”

The single currency is never far from the three's minds and each seized the opportunity to quell fears over the future of economic and monetary union.

“There is no reason at all to be pessimistic. To reach monetary union by 1999, we just need lucidity and determination. Citizens expect to be told what is what. Stop sowing doubt here. We will have a single currency by 1999,” insisted Santer, adding that member states needed to “roll up their sleeves and meet the Maastricht criteria”.

Meanwhile Gonzalez insisted: “We must take a more objective, serene view of how monetary union should be set up.”

On the question of whether members of the new currency club would have to keep up high standards for debt, inflation and interest rates, the Commission president said: “It is clear that member states would not only have to fulfil the criteria to enter, but also if they want to continue to participate in monetary union ... Certain member states may now be critical that sanctions will be too severe. The Commission could agree to a stability pact to increase the cohesion of members of the Union on condition that it would not modify the convergence criteria.”

Santer rejected a Europe à la carte and insisted the 15 members had to strive towards a common foreign and security policy and closer cooperation on the home affairs and justice front.

“Europe is not a multi-row supermarket with everyone choosing what they want,” the president said.

But it was Hänsch who took the floor first. He made a play for a beefed-up Parliament, repeating demands made in its IGC report earlier this year for a greater role for MEPs.

Hänsch also used the occasion to criticise the Union for its “bankruptcy in ex-Yugoslavia”, placing the blame squarely on member states and warning that the “flames of war would soon be lapping at Europe's doors”.

Gonzalez, however, rejected that criticism, saying the Union had done most of the work in the former Yugoslavia, but had not gained recognition for that work.

Jobs for Europe's 18 million jobless was another subject of common concern, with each of the leaders pledging commitment to a world free of the scourge of unemployment.

Judging by the number of suppressed yawns and MEPs leaving the chamber early, it was the debate- the first of its kind - which was new and not the content of the speeches.