Barcelona deal worth all the energy

Date: 28/03/02

The Union's leading think-tanks argue that progress made at the recent summit has contradicted cynics' predictions, writes Simon Coss

EUROPE'S brain boxes are nearly unanimous. As EU summits go, this month's talkfest in Barcelona was actually a success.

No one is suggesting the 2002 spring summit will go down in history as another Maastricht, which saw the birth of the European Union and an agreement to create the single currency. But most of the main EU think-tanks seem to feel that important progress was made in the Catalan capital.

John Palmer, director of the Brussels-based European Policy Centre (EPC), set the general tone in a post-summit report published on 17 March.

He argued that Barcelona had been preceded by 'exaggerated expectations on the part of some political leaders and a pervasive and unjustified pessimism on the part of the media'.

In the end, he suggested, the meeting produced results that fell somewhere between these two extremes.

'The Barcelona summit was not the make-or-break moment for the entire Lisbon economic reform process - as was predicted in advance by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

'But its concrete achievements in delivering decisions on further liberalisation of markets were more substantial than the cynics had predicted,' Palmer wrote, referring to the pledge leaders made two years ago in Lisbon to create the world's most dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010.

Other think-tanks also recognised that the summit's key deal - an agreement to liberalise the EU's electricity and gas markets for business customers by 2004 - was a significant achievement.

In an extensive policy briefing published shortly before the talks, the London-based Centre for European Reform (CER) highlighted the need for greater market liberalisation.

'The supposed completion of the single market in 1992 left much unfinished business,' the group said, pointing out that the European Commission has launched a 'staggering' 1,500 lawsuits against EU governments for failing to respect single market rules.

'A deal on opening energy markets for commercial users is the minimum the summit needs to claim any sort of success,' the CER briefing concluded.

The Barcelona agreement seems to satisfy this requirement. Interestingly, industry lobby UNICE and trade union lobby ETUC were both also relatively content with the outcome of the summit.

While not strictly speaking think-tanks, the two groups nevertheless regularly produce detailed reports on how they feel the EU's economy and labour markets should evolve - the summit's core theme.

UNICE welcomed the decision to free-up the electricity and gas markets although it stressed the need to extend the liberalisation process to domestic power users as soon as possible.

ETUC, meanwhile, said it was pleased that EU leaders had recognised the need to protect public services in Europe - a declaration made essentially to please the French delegation and get them to agree to the electricity deal.

ETUC General Secretary Emilio Gabaglio even went so far as to say the pledge showed that the 'neo-liberal offensive launched on the eve of the Barcelona summit has not succeeded'.

So there.

The European Union's leading think-tanks argue that progress made at the recent European Council, Barcelona, 15-16 March 2002, has contradicted cynics' predictions.