France readies for ‘heaviest Presidency in EU history’

With climate and energy negotiations at the top of France’s priorities and a reshuffle of the European institutions in sight for 2009, the French Presidency promises to be “the heaviest in EU history,” diplomats say.

On 1 July 2008, France takes over the EU’s six-month rotating presidency from Slovenia with an exceptionally busy agenda.

According to a French diplomat in Brussels, “this presidency is the heaviest one of all the history of the European Union in terms of workload”.

This, he explained, is because the EU is getting more cumbersome: there are more countries and commissioners than ever before and the Parliament has gained more powers. But it is also because additional factors have accumulated.

“For the first time, you have this coincidence of a heavier Union but there is also the end of the political mandate of the Commission and Parliament as well as the end of the [ratification process of] the Lisbon Treaty. You never had all these things together.”

A series of sensitive dossiers have also piled up, all of which have to be closed by the end of the year. The energy and climate change package, tabled by the European Commission in January, is the first among them. The package includes a proposed revision of the EU’s CO2 trading scheme and a new renewable energy directive, two dossiers which involve tough negotiations on how to share the burden of commitments between each EU member state.

“Energy and climate change is enough to feed a presidency,” the diplomat pointed out. But he added that “there are circumstances which mean the agenda is heavier for political reasons because some things have been delayed.” This includes for instance a debate on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy, which the French are keen to help shape under their Presidency.

Irish referendum on everyone’s minds

The outcome of the Irish referendum on 12 June will undoubtedly have a considerable impact on the Presidency’s schedule. 

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, spoke about the issue at the European Policy Centre in Brussels on 26 May. “If the process continues without incident as it has so far today – and our sights are first turning to Ireland – we will have at heart to finish the preparatory work that started under the Slovenian presidency,” he said.

But what will happen if the Irish reject the treaty? “There is no Plan B”, Kouchner answered, echoing the European Commission’s official line.

In practice, though, a solution will need to be found if the treaty is rejected and EU leaders will have plenty of time to discuss this during a summit on 19-20 June, just days before the start of the French Presidency. 

Follow-up work would then have to be handled by France, potentially adding to an already busy agenda. “The responsibility of the entry into force of this new treaty is, we are conscious of it, essential,” Kouchner said. “We will therefore attach all our energies to it.”

Preparing for the EU diplomatic service

And provided all goes well and Ireland ratifies, there will still be a lot to do as the pressure then will fall on preparations for the Treaty’s new provisions, which enter into force on 1 January 2009.

According to Kouchner, the French Presidency’s work there will centre on designating the future permanent president of the Council and the new foreign policy chief, decisions which are all expected to be taken by EU heads of state at a summit in December.

Speculation is already rife about the names of the candidates, with names already being circulated (). But Kouchner recently suggested that there could still be a few surprises and that more candidates could emerge (EURACTIV 27/05/08).

Kouchner also said France will work to “lay the foundations for the new external action service as of the 1st of January 2009,” indicating that the challenge will be to “find an efficient functioning between the Presidency of the European Council and the rotating Presidency, and, incidentally, to define the role of foreign affairs ministers in this new scheme”.

Questions remain, however, as to how all the new roles will fall into place. According to the agreed schedule, the Treaty should be ratified by the end of 2008 and start applying as of 1 January 2009. This should also apply for the new permanent EU President and foreign policy chief. 

But when EU leaders meet in December to pick their champion, the outcome of the European elections will still be unknown. And whichever party wins the poll in June will have the legitimacy to ask for the negotiations to be reopened, a situation which could place the new President in a difficult situation if he or she is not backed by the new majority.

Alain Lamassoure, a leading centre-right MEP who advises Sarkozy on European affairs, believes there could be two solutions to this problem. Writing on Blogactiv.eu, he says the first could be to delay the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty until June 2009, leaving the Czech Prime Minister to exert the Presidency according to the current rotating system. 

Alternatively, he says EU leaders could choose to appoint an interim president as of 1 January 2009, and wait for the results of the parliamentary elections in June. “This second option is likely to be chosen for the High Representative: why not resort to it also for the President of the Council?,” asks Lamassoure.

A more protective EU, focused on citizens

After the Treaty, Kouchner said making the EU care more about its citizens will be a central concern, guiding France’s initiatives in almost every area.

“Our second objective will be to respond to the demands of our peoples, who want a stronger Europe to answer globalisation,” he told the EPC conference, saying that despite its positive achievements, Europe “does not convince anymore”. 

He said the French and citizens from other founding EU member states “often fear globalisation” because they see it as being “responsible for part of the unemployment and faults in our social protection system”. 

“Back at home, it is often the interrogations and anxieties which prevail,” Kouchner said.

The issue has come up regularly in speeches by President Nicolas Sarkozy. On his election night, he portrayed the EU as “a Trojan horse of all the threats brought by a transforming world”. More recently, he promised to “put politics back into Europe,” criticising along the way Brussels Eurocrats who dictate “automatic rules that leave no room for political decision and accountability” (EURACTIV 11/02/08). The criticism was also directed at the European Central Bank, which Sarkozy has made a recurrent target.

“We must be able to talk about everything,” Sarkozy said, “just like in any democracy: of our currency which is not a taboo subject, of trade policy, of industrial policy, of reciprocity in competition matters or the excesses of financial capitalism”.

Concretely, Kouchner said, the French approach will seek to review the EU’s search for more competitiveness (the Lisbon agenda) to “associate it with a renovated solidarity, through quality public services that contribute to growth, a renewed social agenda, and the fight against discrimination”.

A social policy package, which the Commission originally planned to publish earlier this year, has been delayed to 2 July, just after the start of the French Presidency.

Four priorities

The four priorities of the Presidency are already widely known. Jean-Pierre Jouyet, French secretary of state for European affairs, further detailed them on 20 May at a hearing before the Conference of Committee Chairmen of the European Parliament. They are:

1. Finalising the energy-climate package;
2. Better controlling immigration flows by agreeing on a European Immigration and Asylum Pact;
3. European security and defence policy, and;
4. Reforming the Common Agricultural Policy.

EURACTIV will return to each of these topics in more detail during the course of the week.

Read more with Euractiv

Interview: EU public opinion polls 'lack spice'

Media organisations or parliamentarians should be allowed to write some of the questions posed to EU citizens in Eurobarometer polls, suggests Jacques-René Rabier, the Commission official who introduced the surveys thirty years ago in an interview with EURACTIV.