A turning point, but with limitations. These extra few comments on the Polish Presidency come in parallel to the debate at the European Parliament, which is very well summed up over the next few pages. The considerations I developed yesterday and the day before in this section aimed to clarify three points: (a) being at the head of the Council does not mean being the president of the EU. The Council is just one of the institutions and, when it meets for a summit (European Council) or for an “External Relations” Council, it has its permanent presidents, Mr Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton respectively; to say nothing of the fact that the Parliament is an equal co-legislator with the Council; (b) the priority job of the Presidency is to reconcile the national positions, without imposing its own stances;( c) the future programme of the EU contains fundamental innovations and changes which will call for long and tricky negotiations. The Polish Presidency will open these, but it will certainly not conclude them. Despite these limitations, which are due to the institutional mechanics of the EU, the Polish Presidency represents a turning point, because it signifies a return of optimism and dynamism, not just among its political classes, but also among the general public, 80% of which in Poland is in favour of European integration.
Immediate objectives. I should add that the Polish dynamism also makes the fast results Europe needs possible. The dossiers on which deadlock needs to be broken include the six regulations on European economic governance, the contents of which have been discussed at length - and with some bitterness - between Council and Parliament, and should have been approved in Strasbourg this week, Commissioner Olli Rehn having announced that 99.9% of the differences of opinion had been overcome. In fact, differences subsist within the Parliament itself, for example on respecting the agreed limits for public deficits; the points under discussion will, in practice, determine the rigour of the sanctions and their more or less automatic nature. The result is that the parliamentary vote has been postponed until September, although the urgency is clear. In the meantime, the Parliament has approved two further important texts (on the framework for derivative products and various aspects of sovereign debt, see yesterday's bulletin). It will be up to the Polish Presidency to negotiate the definitive compromises between Parliament and Council. An onerous task, but an urgent one.
Necessary caution. In external relations, the Eastern Partnership summit, which will be held in Warsaw in September, should clarify and relaunch an area to which Poland attaches a great deal of importance, for obvious geographical reasons. At the same time, however, the Presidency will have to be cautious, because the six countries invited - Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia - are each associated with specific problems, which are different but sensitive. Moldova has even been spoken of as a possible accession candidate! As for Ukraine, the staff of the Commission have made it quite clear: there will be no liberalisation of trade for this country if it concludes a free-trade agreement with Russia. The situation in Belarus is too well-known for there to be any need to labour the point. This Eastern Partnership summit will doubtless be useful, but there is no point expecting results over and above the general orientations.
Deputy to Baroness Ashton? An interesting initiative: the Polish minister Radek Sikorski's offer to act as deputy to Catherine Ashton, which is at the same time a wish, given the low-key role given to the foreign minister of the country of the Presidency from a legal point of view. Mr Sikorski is concerned that Baroness Ashton cannot run European foreign policy alone and has declared himself available whenever she wishes. There are apparently plans (see our bulletin no. 10411) for Mr Sikorski to chair the Cooperation Council with Kazakhstan and to represent Baroness Ashton in the forthcoming trips to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is a development that needs to be followed closely, and which has already been partially pre-empted in a number of cases.
My kind of blend. To conclude, I would like to quote Daniel Cohn-Bendit's assessment of the Polish Presidency's perspective, because he now sees himself as cosmopolitan (his column in the French weekly current affairs magazine Nouvel Observateur, which I will be quoting [our translation], is called “Chronique d'un cosmopolite” [Chronicles of a Cosmopolitan Man]). In his view, “Poland's current vitality could spell opportunity for a doubting Union”. He believes that it is right to be in no hurry in its progress towards the euro: “Poland is patiently building up the conditions for its integration into the eurozone, when others have opted to forge ahead or resorted to cooking the books to achieve this”. At the same time, he calls on Poland “to adopt the ecological and energy policies it still lacks, after decades of over-exploitation of its natural resources, without allowing itself to be lured by the Faustian challenge of nuclear and the exploitation of shale gas”.
Optimism and encouragements: that's my kind of blend. (F.R./transl.fl)