Sarkozy seeks wise views on future EU

The EU will set up a committee of wise persons to discuss the future of Europe in December, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced last Friday (19 October) at the summit in Lisbon.

But several governments are opposed to Sarkozy’s plan for the group to look at the issue of the borders of Europe or other foreign policy questions and are insisting that the new group should not be made up of the usual EU grandees.

The group of wise persons (‘groupe des sages’) will have ten to 12 members, Sarkozy said, and would report on "Europe in 2030". The creation of the group would allow Sarkozy to claim he had kept an election promise to stop the headlong rush for Turkey to become an EU member. But several governments (including the UK, Sweden and Germany) do not want the group to try to define the borders of Europe or look at Turkey’s accession bid. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Sarkozy last week that the group should also steer clear of institutional issues and foreign and defence policy, issues which were dealt with in the reform treaty adopted at the Lisbon summit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the group should report back only after the European Parliament elections in 2009.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, a strong supporter of further enlargement, said last week that the group should focus on how the EU should respond to the opportunities of globalisation. Reinfeldt added that the group should not serve as a pretext for blocking parts of previously agreed commitments on enlargement. "We have an obligation to Turkey," he said.

Partly in response to reports that Sarkozy wanted Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, former French president and chairman of the convention which drafted the EU constitution, to head the group, Reinfeldt said: "We want to avoid the people of the past discussing the future of Europe."

The EU will set up a committee of wise persons to discuss the future of Europe in December, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced last Friday (19 October) at the summit in Lisbon.