Vienna meeting seeks to settle old scores

Date: 25/06/1998

By Tim Jones

A CEREMONIAL visit by European Commissioners to the Austrian government next week will be characterised as much by unfinished EU business as showing the Union's relative newcomers the presidency ropes.

Long-standing disputes over trans-Alpine tolls and anonymous bank accounts, as well as a new spat over power liberalisation, will come to the fore in two days of talks between the 20 Commissioners and their ministerial counterparts in Vienna.

The meeting, which begins with a plenary session next Wednesday (1 July), is a regular feature of EU institutional life as a government takes over the presidency of the Union.

Commission President Jacques Santer, Austrian Prime Minister Viktor Klima and Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schüssel will discuss the broad outlines of the presidency programme.

This will include details of how the Austrians intend to implement the ambitious timetable set for approving the Agenda 2000 package of spending reforms, with the outlines of an agreement due by the time Vienna's presidency ends in December.

Agenda 2000, which is designed to get the EU ready for expansion into eastern Europe, is a highly contentious issue in Austria, where far-right opposition leader Jörg Haider warned recently that enlargement would be a “declaration of war” on Austrians.

Finance Minister Rudolf Edlinger and Economics Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy will coordinate the last elements of preparation for the single currency area, and the running of the Euro-11 ministerial club.

More contentious issues will be dealt with by Commissioners Neil Kinnock (transport), Mario Monti (internal market) and Christos Papoutsis (energy).

In late May, the Commission filed suit at the European Court of Justice against the Vienna government for imposing an “excessive” toll on the Brenner Pass, incompatible with five-year-old EU legislation. This stresses that toll levels must be non-discriminatory and reflect the true costs of construction and maintenance.

Monti and Edlinger will touch on Austria's 200-year-old tradition of allowing savings accounts to be anonymous, another matter which is due to be settled by the ECJ after Vienna failed to meet Commission demands laid down in the spring of 1997.

Papoutsis will seek more information from Economics Minister Johann Farnleitner about the cabinet's recently announced plan to introduce electricity competition from February next year.