Brief items for which space was lacking in earlier editions
*** European Commission/United Kingdom: In an interview with BBC (television), European Commissioner Chris Patten, former chairman of the Conservative Party, formally ruled out returning to politics in his country at the end of his term in the European Commission. "When I finish it, I will be sixty and I would like to enjoy my sixties as much as I can", said the Commissioner for external relations, noting that, after 1992, he had had "two or three extraordinarily interesting jobs" (before entering the European Commission, he had been the last Governor of Hong Kong and chaired the Commission responsible for making proposals for policing in Northern Ireland.
*** EU/defence/United States: According to the Financial Times, General Jean-Pierre Kelche, France's Chief of Defence Staff, said that "nothing prevents us tomorrow from saying we could take responsibility in Bosnia" (with the EU's future rapid reaction force). In Washington, Franklin Kramer, assistant to the Secretary of Defence responsible for international security affairs, when speaking about the EU's future Petersberg-type tasks, said in particular: "I believe that everyone agrees to recognise that, were it a question of a fairly consequential military mission, the planning would have to be carried out by SHAPE". American Defence Secretary, Bill Cohen, has just published a report entitled "Strengthening transatlantic security: a United States' strategy for the 21st Century", known as "Report on the European Strategy".
*** EU/Iraq: According to the press agency INA, the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Saadoun Hammadi told a European delegation led by former French Foreign Minister (as well as former European Commissioner and MEP), Claude Cheysson, that Iraq wanted to strengthen cooperation with Europe "in all fields". Mr. Hammadi considered that this visit "demonstrates your deep awareness of the scale of the injustice suffered by the Iraqi people due to the continued criminal embargo imposed on it for ten years".
*** Socialist parties/Council Presidency: The last of the debates on "the great topics of the 21st Century" organised this year be the Party of European Socialists (in view of the work of the PES Summit, in Berlin in May 2001) was, in Stockholm on 2 December, on the "Welfare States". Among the participant were in particular Swedish Minister Lena Hjlem-Wallen and the scientist Joakim Palme, son of the former Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme.
*** EP/Council Presidency: Members of the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs had talks in Stockholm last week with, in particular, Swedish Finance Minister Bosse Ingholm and the Governor of the Swedish Central Bank Urban Backstrom. On that occasion, the OVP member Othmar Karas asked the future Swedish Presidency of the EU Council to step up information measures on the euro and further involve national parliaments in the campaign on the subject.
*** EU/France: The French National Assembly authorised the government to transpose, by order, some fifty Community directives, including those on motorways and environmental protection (notably "Natura 2000"). This is a question of thereby enabling France to catch up part of the accumulated delay. No less than 136 European directives are waiting to be transposed into French law, some of them for dating back 20 years.
*** EU/Regions: In the context of the French Presidency of the EU, Hubert Vedrine chaired a dinner at the Quai d'Orsay on 5 December marking the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Council of the Municipalities and Regions of Europe, currently chaired by Valery Giscard d'Estaing. The latter paid tribute to people like Jacques Chaban-Delmas. Among the participants were European Commissioner Franz Fischler, MEPs Pervenche Beres, Jean-Louis Bourlanges, Elmar Brok, Catherine Lalumiere and Alain Lamassoure, the former President of the CMRE Pascall Maragall, and the presidents of the Committee of the Region, Josef Chabert, and the Assembly of the Regions of Europe, Luc van den Brande, and the International Union of Cities and Local Authorities, Max Ng'andwe.
*** Unemployment down in EU: The EU's Statistical Office Eurostat (Luxembourg) has announced that unemployment resumed its downward trend in October, in both the euro zone and the EU as a whole. In the euro zone, unemployment dropped below the 9% mark for the first time since May 1992, at 8.9
%. In the EU, the annual level in October was 8.2%. Differences are however significant from one State to the next, with between 2.1% (Luxembourg) and 13.6% (Spain).