Energy, migration and security

José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, defends his policy of pragmatism in the first half of his mandate and tells Dana Spinant that the best of Barroso is yet to come.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso believes that the best years of his administration are yet to come and he is promising to concentrate on delivering "a Europe of results".

Barroso’s Commission took office on 22 November 2004 after he was obliged to withdraw the first line-up of commissioners that he presented to the European Parliament. In an interview with European Voice to mark the two-year anniversary, he said: "My team has reached cruising speed, yes, but I believe the most interesting part is yet to come."

Looking back over the first two years of his administration, Barroso summed up the achievements so far as: "We re-launched the Lisbon Strategy to make it more focused, more structured, we reformed and re-credibilised the Stability and Growth Pact, we reached a political compromise on the services directive, the financial perspectives were approved."

Barroso said he would be concentrating on an agenda of "energy, migration and security" during the months to come. He would also be pressing to make the Berlin Declaration, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome on 25 March 2007, so significant that it helps resolve the EU’s institutional difficulties after the rejection of the constitution in referenda in France and the Netherlands.

He said he was hoping for "a new dynamism for the Union".

"I believe that more exciting times are ahead: the agenda for the completion of the internal market, social stocktaking, the EU budget review… and hopefully we will also make a contribution to the solution of the institutional question, with the Berlin Declaration," he said.

Barroso holds the reins of the Commission at a crucial time for the future of the EU. Negotiations on a major institutional and budgetary overhaul of the EU will be testing member states’ unity over the next three years, so too will disagreements over further enlargement of the Union. The upcoming elections in France and a change of leadership in the UK next year could transform the political landscape.

For many observers, the only way to restart the EU engine is a grand bargain bringing together in one multi-level negotiation the constitution, budget reform and enlargement, and possibly also the allocation of top EU posts, such as the presidency of the Commission and a foreign minister for the EU. The posts could be used as bargaining chips to offer to those countries likely to lose out most in changes to the institutions and to the budget.

Barroso admitted that a review of the EU budget, scheduled for 2008-09, would be linked in people’s minds to the fate of the constitution. "When you speak about the constitution, you speak about what the EU does; money is also about what the EU does."

But he warned: "They should not be negotiated together, as this would make the negotiation even more difficult. From a negotiating perspective I don’t see the advantage of linking one to the other."

He conceded, though, that negotiations might be easier if more elements were put on the table: "You know the saying: ‘if you have a problem, enlarge it’."

The prospect of a grand bargain is attractive to those who think that it will be the only way to win over the UK’s likely future leader Gordon Brown, who is keen on radical reform of the EU budget and on admitting more members (including Turkey) to the EU, to a revised version of the constitution. It could also give some institutional sweeteners to France, which is set to lose some of its cherished farm cash during the budgetary review. One of the aims of the reform is to reduce farm spending and redirect cash towards sectors that can boost the economy, such as research and development.

The Commission is to start working on proposals for the budget reform next year. Barroso said that a modern budget should equip the Union to perform new tasks, on "energy security, migration, research and development, and foreign affairs".

Conscious that he has been criticised for lacking a grand vision for the future of the EU, Barroso defended his pragmatic approach: "Some prefer to speak a lot about institutions and about a great vision. I have a great vision too but the question is how to get there. That’s why we have to be pragmatic. Pragmatic about the means, ambitious about the ends."

The Commission president is viewed by many in France as a champion of Anglo-Saxon liberalism, mainly because of his focus on economic competitiveness and of his affinity with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Barroso said that for him the EU was a political construction, as well as being a market.

He said that both "free market fundamentalists" and "state fundamentalists" were wrong.

"There are, on one side, statists, those who believe that the state or public institutions are solutions for all problems, and those that believe that the market can solve all problems and that don’t believe in institutions.

"My position on the EU is very clear: we are a market, yes, but we are more than a market. We need cohesion, solidarity, without solidarity it’s not a union, and we need political coherence. It is a political construction based on a market.

"Those who think that the market solves everything are wrong. We need to have strong institutions to defend the internal market - competition is one example.

"It is the Commission, with the [European] Court of Justice, that is the guarantor of the treaty and of the market. So even from a market point of view institutions are important."

But he insisted that it was "important to show that we are building Europe not because of some theological idea but because the European dimension isthe right dimension for solving problems".

"The greatest problems that we have - climate change, terrorism, energy supply, mass migration, growing competition from other parts of the world - national levels alone cannot solve them."

Barroso, who before becoming Commission president was prime minister of Portugal, urged his former colleagues, the government leaders, to drop their patriotic reflexes and "try to find European solutions when they come to European problems".

He pointed out that he had a very good relationship with small member states, which "come to Brussels open to the idea of compromise" and with the new member states. "I believe this is important, because I consider it to be one of my tasks, and the tasks of this Commission, the first to really represent the large European Union, to make them understand that the EU is fair."

Barroso said that the Commission would not hesitate to take on those member states that indulged in "economic nationalism", by opposing, for instance, foreign takeovers of national companies. Such protectionism has this year put the Commission on a collision course with several states, notably Poland, Spain and Italy. "I will not give up, as this would be the end of the credibility of the European Commission," Barroso said.

But the Commission’s determination to confront large member states will be put to test at the beginning of next year. Germany, the holder of the EU presidency in the first part of 2007 and therefore a key country for Barroso, is opposed to Commission proposals to simplify decision-making on justice and home affairs and has given its blessing only reluctantly to Barroso’s plans to create a European Institute of Technology. It has also criticised Commission plans to create a European energy regulator and unbundle energy supply and transmission. In addition, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats want accession talks with Turkey to be put on ice, following the Turkish government’s failure to ratify the Ankara Protocol, which would extend the customs unions to all new member states, including Cyprus. The Commission is likely to propose instead a limited suspension of talks on chapters linked to the single market.

Barroso, who last month attended a German cabinet meeting to prepare for the EU presidency, said that he did not see "any fundamental difference" of opinion between him and Merkel. "It is normal that the Commission, when it comes to those European issues, is more ambitious than the member states," he conceded.

In the first part of 2007, all three major EU institutions will be led by politicians from Barroso’s centre-right European People’s Party: Merkel will chair the European Council and Hans-Gert Pöttering, another German Christian-Democrat, will be president of the European Parliament.

The question is whether the political and personal chemistry of the triangle Barroso-Merkel-Pöttering can help put the EU back on track.

"I have very good relationship with Hans-Gert Pöttering, as I have with Angela Merkel, but the EU needs more than a triangle, it needs a complex polygon…an atomium," Barroso says, alluding to the emblematic representation of an atom, the symbol of Brussels, the EU capital.

Halfway through his mandate, the president of the Commission is looking to the future with confidence. As to whether he will be given a second mandate, Barroso, who will be 53 in 2009, ducked the question with a broad smile. "I concentrate on and I enjoy every moment of the current mandate," he says. "The future is for God to know."

José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, defends his policy of pragmatism in the first half of his mandate and tells Dana Spinant that the best of Barroso is yet to come.