Brussels, 05/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - I hope that the intergovernmental conference will end in Nice "in a substantial way", announced, on Friday morning in Brussels, the President of the European Council Antonio Guterres, during a conference on the theme of "Building on Lisbon", organised by the CEPS (Centre for European Studies) on the Lisbon Summit. Our problem is the weakness of the political union, felt the Portuguese Prime Minister, who underlined that the IGC must create the conditions for a more effective decision making process, by foreseeing on the one hand more decisions taken by qualified majority and on the other hand in facilitating the use, "without any discrimination," to strengthened co-operation. Without new mechanisms of this kind, the widened Union risk's paralysis, he said. In answering Peter Ludlow, Chairman of the CEPS, he asked himself if the present mechanism of the EU Council Presidency could in the future continue "in this form," Mr. Guterres asserted that it is important that all the Member States take part in the process of rotating the Presidency.
Mr. Ludlow also noted that the Lisbon summit of the 23 and 24 March brought to the fore both the role of the European Council and the role of the Presidency (the preparation on Lisbon was a true "master stroke" by you, he said to Mr. Guterres) and the Portuguese Prime Minister, in commenting on the results of the summit, announced that he was not in agreement with those who assert that Lisbon signalled the strong return of intergovernmental, within the European Union. I am, on the other hand, very favourable for the "strengthening of the crucial role" of the European Commission, he said, in underlining that the Commission will play a very important role in the follow-up to the European Council in Lisbon and that it is important that the governments are aware if this (Mr. Guterres cited the example of the attempts at regional integration in Latin America, in noting that one of the problem of the Mercosur is that it is "strictly intergovernmental").
The Lisbon summit, felt Mr. Guterres, answered two "fears" of European public opinion: that of Europe "trails behind the United States in an irreversible way", and that which, to overcome its delay, the EU will be forced to "dismantle the European social model". I think, he added, that these two fears are "at the source of the difficulties that we have to win credibility as to our capacity to support the Euro to a level corresponding to economic fundamentals." During my tour of capitals before Lisbon, "I tested my colleagues" by asking them if they read the broad economic guidelines, presently enforced, and the result was "very disappointing", noted Mr. Guterres, in noting that the "spring summit" whose scheduling was decided in Lisbon will enable the heads of State and government to define the priorities of these broad economic policy guidelines, we must show that we are ready to discuss it at the highest level of strategy, priorities and not only the "problems of the day" and that "we are all working in the same direction", added Antonio Guterres; often, while the European Council had just intervened in favour of "noble causes", certain heads of state and government are in fact "very happy" to know that the Finance Ministers will then erase what the summit had just done, he said. "All the different formations of the Council are the Council, they must follow the same policy and not compete between each other," underlined Mr. Guterres.
Finally, the issue of knowing if he is not worried for the future of economic reforms knowing that the future French Presidency should rather emphasis the social agenda (in Lisbon, France obtained that they set as objective the reaching of an agreement on the European social agenda during the European Council on the 7 and 8 December in Nice: Ed.), Mr. Guterres answered by saying that the main goal was to work in a "adequate framework for discussions", by avoiding the usual "ideological" debates. If we set ourselves as objective a society based on knowledge, he asserted, certain things become "evident" and we are all in agreement to recognise that reforms are necessary and that, for example, we will not only liberalise telecommunications to benefit companies, but to give future opportunities to all… (we will return other interventions in the CEPS conference).