Fears over Madrid workload

Date: 23/11/1995

Rory Watson weighs up the task facing Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez as he embarks on a whirlwind series of meetings with European heads of government to discuss lightening the agenda of next month's summit.

SPANISH Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez was in ebullient mood the last time he said goodbye to fellow European Union government leaders. They had just enjoyed a leisurely and stress-free informal two-day summit in Majorca as the tourist season was drawing to an end in late September.

But even then he could not avoid his thoughts turning to the challenges of their next meeting: the formal summit in Madrid on 15 and 16 December.

“What heads of government need is time to discuss things. At European Councils we are always under pressure to take decisions. At Madrid we will be faced with 17 different reports,” he lamented.

That workload could easily fill the largest of briefcases and contrasts with the philosophy behind the Majorca meeting. This, explained Gonzalez, was designed precisely not to discuss anything concrete and “to avoid putting ourselves into straitjackets”.

As Madrid looms the Spanish premier's anxiety is again coming to the fore. He confessed in Strasbourg last week: “There is so much on the Madrid agenda and I am worried about it.”

He added that he hoped to adapt and tighten the agenda and would possibly try to squeeze in an extra negotiating session before his colleagues packed their bags and returned to their national capitals.

With just three formal sessions lasting up to three hours each and three official meals at most summits, the scope for serious debate is limited if each participant wishes to speak on particular issues.

The Madrid summit will be even more overloaded than any of its predecessors. Gonzalez has invited up to a dozen applicant countries from Malta and Cyprus to Baltic and Central and Eastern European states as observers. The joint gatherings and protocol involved will further reduce the time for serious EU negotiation.

The agenda has been made even heavier with the decision to sign the new economic and trade agreement between the EU and the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur, in Madrid on 15 December. The event will bring the presidents of Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay to the Spanish capital and EU leaders will have to set aside at least an hour of their time for the meeting.

Gonzalez started his preparations this week with a visit to Brussels to discuss the summit scenario with European Commission President Jacques Santer, followed by a tête-à-tête with French President Jacques Chirac.

His whirlwind tour of European capitals continues with a visit to Bonn on 27 November, where German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's support is crucial for any specific changes Gonzalez wishes to make to the summit agenda.

In addition to attending the Euro-Mediterranean conference at the end of this month and meeting US President Bill Clinton in Madrid on 3 December, Gonzalez aims to discuss the issues on the summit agenda with every EU leader.

The preparations will end with a Scandinavian tour to Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm on 7 and 8 December.

The scope for cutting the agenda is limited. All the reports to be submitted to the summit have been commissioned by the leaders themselves at previous summits, or are part of the Commission's normal obligations. Some reflect the hobby-horses of particular governments, who would be loathe to see them quietly pushed to one side.

As one senior Spanish official explained: “This tour of capitals is the first one for over a year by a European Council host. Its purpose is to try and resolve as many issues as possible before Madrid.”

Another Brussels-based diplomat suggested: “What leaders need to do is just take note of certain reports and concentrate on a few key themes such as employment, monetary union, enlargement and preparations for the Maastricht Intergovernmental Conference.”

By the time of the Madrid summit, the European Commission will have approved and published 14 reports of varying importance. Some have already been finalised, while others are still in the pipeline.

Five concern job creation: employment, the beneficial impact of EU structural policies, small- and medium-sized enterprises, Trans-European Networks and a White Paper on education and training.

Two focus on the single European currency - the third phase of EMU and the problems of monetary instability - and another two on the state of play on the application of subsidiarity in the Union and the Commission's reply to the Molitor Group's recommendations for the simplification of national and European legislation.

Enlargement will heavily dominate external discussions, with reports on a pre-accession strategy, analysis of the impact of enlargement on existing EU policies (including a separate study on the Common Agricultural Policy), and one on Baltic Sea cooperation.

The series of reports will be completed with two papers from Spanish European Affairs Minister Carlos Westendorp's Reflection Group on the issues which should be raised and settled in the Maastricht IGC, and a report on the measures which member states are taking to combat fraud.

National diplomats in Brussels insist their governments have no difficulty with the unusually heavy volume of documentation which will confront them in Madrid.

“The summit will have to decide the name of the single currency and agree on the mechanics and timetable of the next phase of EMU. But a lot of the heat may well be taken out of the debate by finance ministers when they meet next week,” suggested one senior EU official.

Similarly, the summit is not expected to have major difficulties with Westendorp's report and will agree that the IGC should be formally launched next year. Government leaders have no illusions that consensus on the solutions needed will emerge from the Reflection Group, but they will be happy to leave the arguments until 1996.

Enlargement will loom large in the discussions. The presence of so many potential members - which will, in the process, give a glimpse of what a 27-nation Union might look like - and Chancellor Kohl's determination not to let the process run out of steam, will ensure it a top billing.

But pride of place will go to the Union's various attempts to create jobs. Gonzalez's fear that the agenda is heavily loaded is partly based on the number of employment-related reports.

“There is a strong feeling that we must not repeat the mistakes of the Cannes summit, where there were about six reports on the same subject and leaders were drowned in paper. The view is emerging that what we want is a short, sharp and hard paper of possibly no more than three to four pages, with concrete ideas on how to tackle unemployment,” explains one senior diplomat.

That is likely to be the message which Gonzalez, whose country has the highest unemployment rate in the EU, will take with him on his tour around the capitals.

But emerging from the summit with tangible policies will be much more difficult to achieve.

As one participant at the Cannes summit admitted: “The problem of talking about employment creation is that even when you try to be as concrete as possible, the conversation can seem like cotton wool within five minutes.”

Gonzalez has less than four weeks to prepare a way out of that trap.