Strasbourg, 06/07/2000 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Commission held a policy debate announced several weeks ago on the main guidelines of the EU's external policy. The debate had been requested by External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten with a note to his colleagues (reproduced in No2193 of our series EUROPE/Documents). The same Commissioner had presented his views in a speech in Paris on 15 June (published in No2194 of the above series).
The College fully shared Mr Patten's guidelines concerning: a) the key role of the Commission in the Union's external relations; b) the impossibility of operating a clear separation between the different foreign policy instruments available to the EU, one part of which mainly comes under Member States (CFSP) and another part the Community Institutions and procedures (trade policy, aid and support); c) the need to define priorities; d) the requirement to harmonise projects and decisions on aid with real possibilities; e) the need to improve aid management, a goal for which the Commission must have adequate "human resources".
The Commission decided to hold regular debates on guidelines and on the implementation of its external policy, in principle every three months.
This policy debate provided an opportunity for the Commission to state that: i) it in no way seeks to give itself new powers and new fields of competence, but of using more effectively and fully those that are explicitly confided in it in the Treasty; ii) Mr. Patten's remarks on the relationship between the Commission and "Mr. Cfsp", Javier Solana, in no way indicate a rivalry but stress the existence of certain institutional ambiguities that it would be appropriate to clarify.