Helsinki learns lessons of past EU presidencies

Date: 01/07/1999

By Tim Jones

THE Finnish government is doubly blessed by the timing of its presidency of the EU, even though the resignation of European Commission President Jacques Santer's team and the election of a new Parliament may take some of the gloss off the first three months.

Over the past year, the cabinet ministers and officials who were today (1 July) handed the responsibility for running one of the world's economic superpowers have had the privilege of sitting in on two contrasting presidencies.

The Austrians provided a template for how a small, new EU entrant with preoccupations linked to its former semi-detached status on the fringe of the Soviet bloc could direct Union business. By contrast, the departing Germans set a new standard in how not to run the EU show.

Even his critics acknowledge that Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen runs a tight ship. The ego wars which took place under German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's watch are unlikely to be repeated, at least in part because the Finns are desperate to be regarded as administratively competent in their first bite at the presidency.

During its first month at the helm, Helsinki will make no splash at all, for good or ill. All eyes will be on Brussels, where incoming European Commission President Romano Prodi will convene an inaugural meeting of his new team and then present his beauty parade to MEPs.

Indeed, the legislative limbo caused by the demise of Jacques Santer's team and its subsequent decision to shun all controversial policy proposals has depressed Lipponen's cabinet no end.

Once it became clear that the Prodi Commission would not take office until mid-September at the earliest, the Finnish ambassador to the EU called on fellow envoys to cajole the caretaker team into launching at least a handful of policy proposals before the long summer break.

A list of 20 initiatives was sent to Santer's private office and returned to the Finns with ten extra policies added, but no pre-summer promises. Most irritating of all for the Finns, who have championed the cause of greater openness in the EU's decision-making process since joining the club in 1995, long-awaited draft rules on freedom of information within the Union's institutions and protection of personal data held by them will not now see the light of day until October at the earliest.

When big-picture policy does come to the fore at the October summit in Tampere, EU leaders will not be focusing on a Finnish preoccupation.

Lipponen was asked by those Union governments which are obsessed with immigration, free movement and asylum issues - Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and company - to call the first-ever summit on justice and home affairs. Still, it could have been worse: Lipponen's staff had been prepared to sign over Tampere to closing the Agenda 2000 negotiations had March's Berlin summit gone awry.

The most attractive promise of the new presidency comes from Finance Minister Sauli Niinistö, who has pledged to put an end to the seemingly endless stream of EU job-creation initiatives now Bonn's farcical European Employment Pact is out of the way. "We have seen every presidency finding a new headline for the same discussions and there are a lot of headlines already." he said recently. "We think we should package them together since the discussions under all these headlines are basically the same."

The Finns' one indulgence - their 'big idea' to match the employment pact - will be the 'northern dimension' they are seeking for the EU's foreign policy. This is meant to be a counterpart to the Union's concentration on enlarging to the east and the French- and Spanish-mandated 'southern dimension', which led to the formation of big-ticket aid programmes for North Africa.

This renewed interest in the north is designed to make the Russians feel wanted even if it is unlikely to translate into anything much more than warm words. Indeed, the Portuguese presidency has already proposed an 'African summit' as a counterpart to the 'northern dimension'.

Helsinki was ordered by last December's summit in Vienna to draw up an assessment of the first year of economic policy coordination under monetary union. Niinistö's aides will concentrate their efforts on beefing-up the Euro-11 ministerial coordination group, even if this angers their Swedish and Danish friends, and on obtaining agreement on the controversial savings tax proposal in time for the Helsinki summit in December.