15-16 June European Council

Date: 18/06/1998

EU LEADERS agreed guidelines to promote employment through profound economic reform. The full benefits of EMU and the single market for all Europe's citizens could be achieved only by a strategy to promote employment through increased competitiveness and social cohesion within a framework of macroeconomic stability, stated the presidency conclusions.

THE summit welcomed the publication and adoption of employment action plans by member states and urged governments to apply them as speedily as possible. Heads of state and government set orientations to guide future work on employment. These were to include the development of a skilled and adaptable workforce through lifelong learning, strengthening action on equality of opportunity and encouragement of family-friendly working practices, promoting new ways of organising work, ensuring the tax and benefits system did not discourage employment, and helping smaller businesses. The summit welcomed the finance ministers' decision to produce short year-end reports on the efficiency of capital and product markets.

THE single market itself should be a motor for new jobs, said EU leaders. They welcomed the extensions to the European Commission's single market scorecard to include measurements of market integration, and invited the Commission to use this further as a tool for bench-marking purposes. They also supported a British presidency initiative to expose unwarranted price differences across the EU and compare them with those on offer in third countries, to ensure consumers benefited fully from both the single market and the single currency. The summit reaffirmed its commitment to transposing overdue internal market legislation into national law by the end of this year. Summiteers invited the Commission to pursue its plans to make enforcement of single market laws more efficient and improve complaints procedures.

A SUSTAINED effort is needed on the part of member states and all EU institutions to bring the Union closer to people by making it more open, more understandable and more relevant to daily life, according to the summit conclusions. Union leaders called on all the institutions to ensure rapid implementation of the Amsterdam Treaty's chapters on openness and welcomed the Commission's use of the Internet to inform citizens of their single market rights and opportunities. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Jacques Chirac together presented their joint letter to the summit, urging the Union to apply more actively the principle of subsidiarity, providing for EU decisions to be made at the lowest practicable level of government. Heads of government agreed to hold a special summit in Austria in October to discuss these issues.

THE summit endorsed the principle that major policy proposals from the Commission should be accompanied by an appraisal of their environmental impact. It welcomed the submission by the Commission of a draft strategy to integrate environmental protection into all EU policies, as agreed in the Amsterdam Treaty. All ministerial Councils were urged to establish their own programmes for integrating environmental and sustainable development considerations throughout their policy areas, and monitor moves to implement the Commission's guidelines.

SUMMITEERS welcomed the excellent advances made in implementing the action plan to fight organised crime, including ratification of the Europol Convention and the conclusion of pre-accession crime-fighting pacts with the countries of eastern and central Europe and Cyprus. They invited justice ministers to present a report on implementation of the action plan at the Vienna summit, and called on member states which had not already done so to ratify the fraud convention to protect EU financial interests. Union leaders also endorsed the key elements of a new drugs strategy for 2000-2004, which includes joint customs surveillance and initiatives to dry up supplies.

THE debate on the Commission's Agenda 2000 proposals to prepare the EU for enlargement to central and eastern Europe was short and amounted to a restatement of known positions. The presidency conclusions simply stated that final agreement would need to be reached on the main Agenda 2000 proposals as a whole. EU leaders said useful progress had been made in highlighting the key issues, including the financial perspectives of the Union from 2000 to 2006. There was widespread support for maintaining the present categories of spending within the overall EU budget and making a clear distinction between money for the EU-15 and that earmarked for pre-accession aid. The summit restated the words of the 8 June finance ministers' meeting, which pointed out that some member states (Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden) were keen to see the creation of a mechanism for correcting budgetary imbalances while others opposed it. Summiteers agreed that the Commission's plans to reform the Common Agricultural Policy were the basis for an agreement. On the Agenda 2000 package as a whole, they agreed substantial progress on the key elements should be made at the Vienna summit in December so that political agreement could be reached no later than March 1999.

THE statement on the progress of enlargement negotiations was carefully worded to take account of Turkey. The conclusions stated that each applicant country would be judged on the basis of the same criteria and would progress at its own rate depending on its degree of preparedness for membership. EU leaders called on the Commission to deliver pre-accession aid as quickly as possible and ensure it focused on priorities in agriculture, the environment and transport. They urged the front-runner applicants - Cyprus, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovenia - to bring forward position papers as soon as possible so that negotiations could advance rapidly. The Commission and EU presidency were invited to pursue the objective of harmonising Turkey's legislation with Union law and the Commission was asked to table proposals to underpin the strategy with financial support, despite Greek Premier Costas Simitis' objections.

THE summit welcomed the progress of economic reform in Russia and Moscow's strengthening of tax administration. Member states said they were ready to consider extra cash aid as “necessary and appropriate”.

HEADS of state and government held a ceremonial lunch with South African President Nelson Mandela,but failed to sign a far-reaching trade agreement. Instead, the summit set an autumn deadline for finalising the deal and called on all EU member states to respond positively to the new flexibility shown by South Africa.

ON KOSOVO, the summit condemned in the strongest terms the violence of Serb forces in the province and claimed President Slobodan Milosevic bore a heavy personal responsibility. EU leaders warned that unless the violence ended and refugees were allowed to return home, the international community would give a much stronger response of “a qualitatively different order”.

EU LEADERS urged India and Pakistan to sign the nuclear test-ban treaty and warned of further measures should they fail to make any progress in this area.

FINANCE ministers issued a separate statement on the continuing financial crisis in Asia and urged the Japanese authorities to push through further structural reforms and implement measures to strengthen the financial system.