| Author (Person) | Davies, Eric | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Publisher | ProQuest Information and Learning | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Series Title | In Focus | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Series Details | 17.3.02 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Publication Date | 16/03/2002 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content Type | News, Overview, Topic Guide | In Focus | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Described by Prime Minister Tony Blair as a "make or break" meeting, the Barcelona European Council focused on five specific areas:
The Barcelona meeting was also supposed to decide where a clutch of new EU agencies should be located - following failure at the Laeken European Council in December 2001. Prior to the meeting, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar said it would be 'an opportunity to give fresh impetus to Europe"s agenda for reform'. Mr Aznar later commented that the Barcelona summit has made the economic and social reforms agreed at the March 2000 Lisbon European Council 'irreversible'. Barcelona was the first European Council meeting to include leaders of the Candidate Countries as full participants. Following an agreement that Serbia and Montenegro should stay together, their Presidents also attended (the agreement could pave the way for EU membership). The Summit - which took place on the outskirts of Barcelona - attracted protests, but not on the scale seen at similar high-profile events. Background As is so often the case with these summits, the significance of the Barcelona European Council was somewhat overstated. In summer 2001 Tony Blair said that Barcelona would be a 'make-or-break' event for the EU; he later referred to the summit merely as a 'staging post'. In a pre-summit letter to EU leaders, European Commission President Romano Prodi wrote:
Mr Prodi also warned leaders that setting priorities is not enough: 'attention will now turn increasingly to you, your governments and the European Parliament to take the necessary political decisions and implement them without any delay.' Making his first speech to the European Council, Pat Cox MEP, the European Parliament"s new President, touched on a range of issues. Some of the sentiments he expressed were similar to those of President Prodi:
and
Mr Cox also emphasised the importance of foreign policy ('an area where the great majority of our fellow European citizens see the EU as having particularly significant added value.') and particularly of EU-US relations. One of the most contentious issues discussed at the summit was the liberalisation of the gas and electricity markets. It was agreed that, from 2004, business and industrial users will be able to obtain gas and electricity supplies from other countries, thereby liberalising some 60% of the market. Although the exclusion of domestic consumers was a blow to some Member States, including Italy and the UK, Spain's Finance Minister, Rodrigo Rato, highlighted that progress had been made: 'A year ago there was no possibility of agreement at all, that is why we should be pleased.' National interests once again played a significant part in the discussions. French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin - both of whom are candidates in the forthcoming Presidential election - wanted the public sector to be protected from competition. However, Denmark's Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, expressed his concern that national interests were put before those of the Union: 'There is a bit too much foot-dragging when it comes to the political will to see through reforms in Europe.' The Lisbon European Council in March 2000 set the European Union the target of creating 20 million new jobs by 2010, primarily by using internet technology to make it the world's most dynamic knowledge-based economy. Some five million new jobs have been created since Lisbon, but significant problems have been encountered in developing the internet economy. Internet penetration in the EU is far lower than in the United States: 38% and 58% of homes having net access respectively. Within the EU, there are considerable differences in internet availability, with 60% of people in the Netherlands having internet access, compared to only 10% of those in Greece. Online shopping has not taken off, with only 4% of EU web users making frequent purchases over the internet. Some of consumers' reluctance to shop online is apparently due to security fears; the EU wants to establish a Cyber Security Task Force to combat internet crime. On the day before the summit started, thousands of trade unionists met in Barcelona to demand better protection for workers and to call for Europe's traditional emphasis on welfare and regulation to be maintained. Tony Young, President of the British Trades Union Congress, said:
However, rising unemployment in some Member States is apparently persuading leaders to seek both greater flexibility and mobility in the labour market, making it easier for workers to find jobs in other Member States and less expensive for companies to 'hire and fire' people. Although not on the summit agenda, the issue of Iraq was apparently discussed informally by leaders. UK support for the United States' position on Iraq was not well received. Both France and Germany said they would not support military action against Iraq unless it was sanctioned by the United Nations (the UK argues that Iraq has broken UN Resolutions and there is therefore no need for a further UN mandate). The Presidency Conclusions The Presidency Conclusions are divided into three main sections: Part 1 has four main subdivisions: 'General political and economic context', 'Maintaining the momentum behind our long-term strategy', 'Priority action' and 'Improving working methods'. The European Council identified three broad areas for priority action: 'Active policies towards full employment: more and better jobs'; 'Connecting European Economies', and 'A competitive economy based on knowledge'. With regard to improving working methods, leaders decided that discussions of the Union's Broad Economic Policy Guidelines and annual Employment Package should be synchronised, and that the Spring European Council will in future review economic, social and environment policies as a whole. Part II of the Conclusions covers a range of issues, including the Convention on the Future of Europe, Euro-Mediterranean financial cooperation, the Northern Dimension, US measures on steel, Ratification of the Treaty of Nice, and external relations (amongst which feature Gibraltar, the Western Balkans, Serbia and Montenegro, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Zimbabwe, and the Middle East - a Declaration of Barcelona on the Middle East is annexed to Part II). Part III is 'Contributions to the deliberations' and consist primarily of reports of four recent Council meetings: Economic and Financial Affairs Council; Employment and Social Policy Council; Internal Market, Consumer Affairs and Tourism Council; Environment Council. Two issues expected to be discussed at Barcelona failed to get a mention in the Conclusions: where to locate a clutch of new EU agencies (a decision which should have been taken at Laeken in December 2001), and who will succeed Wim Duisenberg as head of the European Central Bank, following his resignation. Further information within European Sources Online:
Further and subsequent information on the subject of this In Focus can be found by an 'Advanced Search' in European Sources Online by inserting 'barcelona' or some other appropriate term in the keyword field. Further information can be seen in these external links:
Eric Davies Overview of the main items on the agenda and the progress made at the Spring European Council held in Barcelona in March 2002 under the chair of the Spanish government. |
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| Subject Categories | Politics and International Relations | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Countries / Regions | Spain | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
