Bruton attempts to inject vitality into EU business

Date: 19/09/1996

IRISH Prime Minister John Bruton set out a tightly focused agenda for the Union this week by insisting that the EU concentrate on five central challenges.

Addressing MEPs in Strasbourg for the first time since his country took over the EU presidency, Bruton declared that the Union had to be made “vital, relevant and, above all, one with which our citizens can identify”.

The premier, who will host two European summits before the end of the year, maintained that this rejuvenated Union could only be achieved if it were relevant to the public, successfully revised the Maastricht Treaty and introduced a single currency on time.

Externally, he stressed that the EU had to secure the continent's place in the world and complete its enlargement into eastern and southern Europe.

The Irish premier's attempt to inject what he regards as some overdue vitality and relevance into the EU's activities during the European Parliament's second state of the Union debate comes against a background of almost universal criticism of the EU's current performance.

“Six months after the opening of the Intergovernmental Conference, the general mood is one of disillusion and depression. The Union is dismally uninspiring. To an overwhelming number of people it is irrelevant,” Socialist Group leader Pauline Green complained yesterday (18 September).

This critical theme was swiftly taken up by Liberal Group leader Gijs de Vries. He branded the Union “an autistic kind of organisation which did not listen to its citizens” and warned that the next two years would determine whether the EU became a cornerstone of Europe or degenerated into instability.

He also demanded that EU leaders show their mettle by ensuring the extradition of alleged war criminals from former Yugoslavia to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

The tone had been set at the outset of the debate by Parliament President Klaus Hänsch, who first introduced the concept of holding wide-ranging state of the Union debates last November.

He attacked EU government leaders for failing to tackle unemployment despite two decades of speeches and analyses; castigated finance ministers for granting 1 billion ecu of subsidies to tobacco producers while refusing to allocate a similar sum to Trans-European Networks; and denounced the UK's attempt to use a policy of non-cooperation to block Union business.

Commission President Jacques Santer voiced similar alarm at the tendency to undermine the community of law on which the Union is founded. He singled out for particular criticism the German authorities, because of the recent controversy over aid to Volkswagen, and the British government for its BSE tactics.

“The Commission would be doing a disservice to the Union if it tolerated such behaviour. It would be a party to the undermining of the single market and, I have no doubt, of the Union itself,” he warned.