Spain to focus on economic reform during presidency

EU’s incoming presidency intends to put economic reform at heart of its six-month programme.

The incoming Spanish presidency of the EU said today that it will seek binding commitments from member states that they will reform their economies.

It wants the binding commitments to form part of a ten-year strategy that governments are expected to agree upon next year whose aim will be to improve the EU’s growth and competitiveness.

“Sooner or later we are going to have to face the need for enhanced and better [economic] co-operation,” Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos said.

The strategy, labelled ‘eu2020’ by the European Commission, will replace the EU’s Lisbon reform agenda, which expires next year.

Governments agreed the Lisbon agenda in 2000 and said that it would turn Europe into “the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010. Experts say that the strategy’s two ‘headline’ goals – that the EU should achieve 70% employment and spend 3% of its gross domestic product on research and development – will both be missed.

Moratinos said that one of the “shortcomings” of the Lisbon strategy had been that it had “no binding mechanism” to oblige member states to implement reforms.

He said that there needed to be “consequences” under the new strategy for member states that do not implement agreed reforms.

“We need to have many more binding elements,” he said.

Moratinos said it was too early to say how this would be achieved and that a number of options would be considered, some “less binding” than others.

The adoption of the strategy will be one of the centrepieces of Spain’s EU presidency. It will be discussed by EU leaders at summits in early February and on 25-26 March. Moratinos said that he hoped the March meeting would “send a clear signal of the direction to take” on the strategy. Leaders would then formally agree it at a summit in June.

A similar timetable was set out by José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, in a debate with MEPs on Tuesday. The Commission, which is currently holding consultations about what elements should be included in the strategy, is aiming to publish its proposals prior to the February summit.

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The Spanish government had initially harboured hopes that the new strategy would be named after its capital city, Madrid, but Barroso has used the eu2020 label extensively in recent months.

Moratinos said no decision had been taken yet on the name but that ‘2020’ “may well” end up being in it.

Spain, a Lisbon presidency

Moratinos pointed out that Spain would be the first country to take over the presidency since the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty on 1 December. The treaty has taken responsibilities away from the national rotating presidency and given them to two permanent figures, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European council, and Catherine Ashton, the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy.

“We are talking about a new Europe,” Moratinos said.

He said that Ashton and Van Rompuy “will be the ones who will lead Europe in the first six months of 2010”, not Spain. The Spanish presidency would be “modest and discreet in pursuing its aims,” he said.

“There will be no competition of any kind [from Spain]…it is a question of communication, complementarity and support,” he added.

He said that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, had reached a “gentleman’s agreement” with Van Rompuy that the latter will chair any EU-related summits – such as the summit with the US on 25 May – that take place in Spain during the next six months. Zapatero would still play an “important role” at the summits, he said.

Spain’s four main priorities for its presidency, as listed by Moratinos, are the “full and effective application of the Lisbon treaty” including the EU’s charter of fundamental rights, helping Europe’s recovery from the economic crisis, increasing a sense of EU citizenship and promoting Europe’s role in the world. He said that the promotion of gender equality would be a “cross-cutting priority” that would apply “across everything we do”.

Phantom MEPs

He confirmed that, as part of its work to fully implement the Lisbon treaty, Spain will seek agreement on increasing the number of members of the European Parliament by 18.

The initiative by Spain is an attempt to reconcile a conundrum created by the slowness of the process of ratifying the Lisbon treaty, which came into force on 1 December.

In the Parliament elections in June, 736 MEPs were elected, in line with provisions in the Treaty of Nice. Under the Lisbon treaty, the Parliament should have 754 members. Four of the 18 additional MEPs – commonly referred to as ‘the phantom MEPs’ in Brussels – would come from Spain.

Moratinos said Spain planned to resolve this by presenting, “as rapidly as possible”, a draft protocol that would be appended to the Lisbon treaty. Once agreed, the protocol would need to be ratified by all 27 member states before it could enter into force.

Moratinos said Spain would aim to push forward EU enlargement talks, not least with the western Balkans. He said Spain would take responsibility for resolving the dispute between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) over what FYROM’s permanent name should be. He said that it would be a “logical and good thing” for Serbia to present a request for EU accession and that he expected the country to do it “relatively soon”. He expressed hope that accession negotiations with Croatia could be concluded under the Spanish presidency.

He said that Spain would take a “neutral” and “constructive” stance on discussions concerning Kosovo, despite being one of five EU member states not to have recognised the country.