Aznar unlikely to upset EU balance

Date: 04/04/1996

By Pedro Lopez de Pablo

DURING the next two weeks, Felipe Gonzalez, who led Spain in its embrace of the EU, is expected to step down and hand over the reigns of power to José Maria Aznar.

But Gonzalez's European policy will effectively remain intact.

After weeks of wrangling to form a government, Aznar is now on the verge of securing the position of premier which his electoral victory last month brought within reach.

With the 156 seats the Partido Popular (PP) won on 3 March and 16 seats held by the Convergéncia i Unio (CiU) lent to him by Catalan President Jordi Pujol, Aznar only needs three more to have a majority in the 350-seat parliament and put an end to 13 years of Socialist party rule.

He will seek these from the Basque nationalist party Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), or the nationalists of the Canary Islands, Coalición Canaria (CC).

Although it now seems certain that Aznar will be invested in office by the middle of this month, he will not govern alone, and will have to consult the CiU on each and every piece of legislation that goes through the Madrid parliament. It will be a permanent negotiation process that will allow Pujol not only to control the government, but to withdraw his support at any time.

Despite the harrowing concessions Aznar has already had to, and will have to go on making to govern, Spain's march towards the Maastricht criteria for European Monetary Union (EMU) seems set to continue.

By extending the 1995 budget for this year, with a few minor adjustments, Spain will be able to continue the current trend of reducing its public deficit.

The Banco de España has even allowed itself the luxury of lowering interest rates by half a point thanks to a declining rate of inflation.

Pujol and Aznar have discussed economic measures and both men have declared that they want Spain to be among the countries selected for EMU in 1998.

Madrid's approach towards the Intergovernmental Conference is also expected to remain unchanged under the new regime.

The decision to appoint Javier Elorza (the Spanish ambassador to the EU who was sent to Brussels by Gonzalez) as the country's representative at the IGC, despite the change of government, is seen as evidence of continuity in Spanish policy.

Outgoing Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Westendorp appointed Elorza to the post after consulting with the PP's Rafael Arias Salgado, who is likely to be Aznar's foreign minister.

Under the new regime, Spain will continue to defend three key interests during the IGC.

Firstly, it will press for a deepening of the Union so that enlargement does not mean a dilution of EU integration and to prevent any diminution in Spain's influence in Union institutions.

Secondly, it will seek to preserve in the union treaty the solidarity between richer and poorer partners - in other words, to maintain the cohesion funds even if there is no talk of money during IGC negotiations.

Finally, Madrid will fight to incorporate enough police and judicial cooperation into the treaty to prevent one EU country from giving political asylum to a citizen of another member state accused of a crime in his home country.

This is designed to avoid a repetition of the clash between Brussels and Madrid over the case of two Basques sought by Spain for terrorist links and whom the Belgian authorities have refused to extradite.

These three key issues for Spain were outlined last autumn in a position paper drafted, and unanimously adopted, by a parliamentary committee made up of members of the Senate and Congress and of all political parties.

The committee was headed by PP member Isabel Tocino, and it is very unlikely that it will be changed by the new parliament.

Aznar will not alter those goals other than to add his personal style to their expression and to change the cabinet members who have been tasked with overseeing them.

Aznar's European policy will hold no surprises for his EU partners, as it will be closely linked to the document approved last November at the European Peoples' Party congress held in Madrid.

This espouses a multi-speed Europe along the lines put forward by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in which slower states would not be able to prevent faster ones from moving ahead without them. Spain's goal is to be in the fast lane.