"Coordination at the level of the euro zone will be strengthened in order to address the challenges the euro area is facing," according to the draft.
The strengthened coordination rules are to be agreed as part of the proposed 'Europe 2020' strategy for sustainable growth and jobs, tabled by the European Commission earlier this month (EurActiv 03/03/10).
The draft summit conclusions set a June 2010 deadline for the European Commission to present its plans, stressing that the proposals should make full use of "the new economic coordination instruments offered by the Lisbon Treaty".
The text explicitly mentions Article 136 of the Lisbon Treaty, which states that the EU Council of Ministers – representing the 27 member states – can adopt measures concerning eurozone countries in order "to strengthen the coordination and surveillance of their budgetary discipline" and "to set out economic policy guidelines for them".
Such measures can be adopted by a qualified majority of the "participating member states," meaning in this case the 16 countries that are currently members of the euro (Article 238.3(a)).
EU leaders are also pressing the European Commission to "shortly" present proposals on "possible innovative sources of financing," citing the "global transaction levy," which has already been widely debated in Brussels (EurActiv 11/03/10).
Monitoring
EU leaders will also spell out the details of a mechanism to monitor the implementation of the 'Europe 2020' targets set at European and national level.
José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, proposed five "headline targets" – on employment, climate change and energy, education, research and poverty reduction – and suggested that "policy warnings" should be issued for EU countries that fail to meet them (EurActiv 03/03/10).
With this aim in mind, EU leaders are expected to agree to "once a year make an overall assessment of progress achieved both at EU and at national level". Member states are required to present their domestic targets in a National Reform Programme to be delivered each year, starting from autumn 2010, according to the draft conclusions.
EU leaders are also committed to holding regular debates on the strategy’s priorities, starting with research and development "in October 2010" and energy policy "in early 2011".
Targets up for debate
But the draft summit text does not mention the European Commission's proposed five "headline targets," which will be up for discussion between EU heads of state and government.
Education targets in particular have drawn criticism from Germany, which is worried that the EU objectives could step on its federal competences (EurActiv 19/03/10).
The draft conclusions also avoid mentioning the Commission's proposal to invest at least 3% of national GDP into research and development. Finance ministers last week disputed this suggestion, calling for a more result-oriented approach (EurActiv 17/03/10).
Reporting to be separate from Stability and Growth Pact
The conclusions also stress that "the timing of the reporting" on the 'Europe 2020' strategy should be "kept clearly separate" from reporting under the euro zone's Stability and Growth Pact, which limits public deficits to 3% of GDP.
This particular point was stressed at the insistence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had expressed fears that closely linking the two would make fiscal surveillance "unnecessarily political" (EurActiv 03/03/10).
This represents a setback for the European Commission, which had proposed that reporting under 'Europe 2020' and the Stability and Growth Pact "be done simultaneously" in order to "bring the means and the aims together" (EurActiv 03/03/10).
"The chancellor has said - and the German position still is - that we don't want any mix between the Stability and Growth Pact and the Europe 2020 strategy," said an EU diplomat, speaking to EurActiv on condition of anonymity.
"So we don't want to have all the targets in one basket. We don't want the criteria in the Stability and Growth Pact mixed with the criteria in the evaluation of Europe 2020, because they are not two sides of one medal but are complementary."
