Causes for scepticism. The building site of European achievements has never been so active; the institutions are overwhelmed by the number of texts, projects and documents presented to it, some of which will become Community legislation. But public opinion might struggle to appreciate this, for two reasons: the decisions made take time to get up and running; and very often, they are technical texts, the significance and scope of which is difficult to grasp. The result is that the current work to further European integration is not clear for all to see, particularly as the attitudes of the politicians sometimes clash: one person's meat may be another's poison, but fortunately, the European Parliament welcomes every inclination. On top of this comes the fact that, in certain member states, there is the temptation, against which I have already spoken out in this column, to lay the blame for national failings at the EU's door.
The result of these cumulative efforts has been rampant euroscepticism, this despite the fact that at the same time, the EU is surrounded by countries and people knocking on its door or trying to set in place the closest possible links with it. I therefore still feel that it is worth summarising, by way of example, the EU's activities in a single day not long ago, taking as a basis for this one of our own bulletins from this short week, number 10841, which I have now before me.
Banks under control. The first article in this bulletin is about controls on banks' activities, in other words, the draft directive proposed by the European Commission to increase the transparency of information on banking activities. The Commission emphasises the opacity which has had the result that 60 million Europeans have no bank accounts, though at least 25 million of these people want one. This new draft directive covers the transparency of banking activities, client mobility, etc. The Commission continues to call for transparency, as the banks are largely responsible for this opacity in financial activities and tax evasion. Application of the new rules: 2015. One can quite see that, apart from those directly involved and specialists, the impact of this initiative will not be especially prominent among the general public.
The next article concerns the announcement by European Commissioner Algirdas Semeta that the Commission is to propose that the automatic exchange of fiscal information be extended to additional categories of financial operations. The commissioner believes that the political situation has moved on, making it possible to get tougher on tax evasion. When will this initiative take shape? A few months' time.
Protecting economic recovery. Portugal has announced further austerity measures, in order to stick to the conditions for remaining in the euro, but avoiding any increase in taxes so as not to compromise the prospects of economic recovery, jobs and investments. As for Greece, the IMF talks of progress in the budgetary adjustment, but also stressed the shortcomings in the country's fight against tax evasion and rocketing unemployment in the private sector, whilst the public sector still has surplus staff due to “the taboo of redundancy”; what's more, public debt remains too high. The results there are still somewhat rocky, therefore.
Other areas. The announcements of action in other areas also speak volumes:
Food health and safety standards. The Commission has proposed a raft of measures to reassure both consumers and producers, following well-publicised scandals, such as horsemeat being sold as beef. Animal and plant health, checks, reproduction - it's all covered - and we know how interested citizens are in this. But the legislative package as a whole will not be able to enter into force until 2016.
Environment. The Commission's document describes a strategy to protect and improve Europe's natural capital, covering the political instruments, information, innovation and access to funding; it also announces an assessment of the costs and of the social and economic advantages of the programme.
Energy. As we know, there is no European energy policy; but the heads of state and government (European Council) will be discussing it at the end of the month and the business sector (BusinessEurope) is all ears. In other energy news, Ukraine wants to be an energy hub for Europe, on the basis of its geographical position between the EU and Russia. EU/Ukraine/Russia negotiations are underway.
Density of projects and initiatives. These points I have mentioned prove just how deeply the EU, contrary to the impression of inertia, which is too often communicated to the general public, is committed to initiatives and achievements which will change the continent. It will take a certain amount of time to bring them into being, but the density of the projects and plans is there.
(FR/transl.fl)