Brussels, 21/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - The main message to the participants of the European Council of Stockholm is "we must hurry up" and take advantage of the opportunity provided to "harvest the fruit of growth" and speed up the implementation of economic reforms, said European Commission President Romano Prodi. He was speaking on Wednesday as he explained to the press what he expects to come out of the summit on 23 and 24 March. "We are not asking for the impossible", said Mr Prodi, who had already stated in February what, according to the Commission, are the areas in which more should be done to give concrete substance to the Lisbon Strategy (see EUROPE of 8 February, p.6). The European Council should take "specific commitments" in six areas, said Mr Prodi, specifying that "we need" the following:
- "Targets" for the full opening of the gas and electricity markets and the liberalisation of postal services As we noted yesterday with Mr Jospin, this must go hand in hand with the quality and universality of services, avoiding the inconveniences that liberalisation may have had in some countries, said Mr Prodi.
- A "specific commitment" on accelerating the integration of financial markets. Mr Prodi declared the Commission is "fully in agreement" with the Lamfalussy report, but that the project set in place by the Council was "unnecessarily complex" and made decisions slower. Mr Prodi, who hoped that Coreper would, in its deliberations before the summit, "be able to take the Commission's objections into account", affirmed that the latter has not acted for "reasons of power" but in order to return to "simplicity and rapidity" in decision-making, as advocated in the Lamfalussy report. He said he did not rule out reaching a rapid agreement but stressed that it is not necessary (as has happened, he said, too often over recent years) to take advantage of this innovation to introduce changes in the well consolidated Commission/Council/European Parliament relations. The Parliament, he said, has played a constructive role in this connection.
- "Decisions, even though probably not definitive" on a Single Sky by 2004. The Commission's proposal is here, specified Mr Prodi, "but we do not believe it is useful to table it until divergence over Gibraltar has been settled". "History is moving on", he added, regarding Anglo-Spanish differences over Gibraltar, and noting that, in recent days, he had had to "read the Treaty of Utrecht, even in Latin".
- By the end of the year, a Community patent that is not too costly (which would be the case if it had to be translated into ten languages and, after enlargement, into twenty) and which is legally binding (which means a single jurisdiction).
- A "skilled labour force", which mainly means qualifications in the new technologies and lifelong learning.
- "Concrete commitments" to face up to the ageing population. Mr Prodi recalled his proposal that the long-term balance of pension systems should be introduced as a criterion for the Stability Pact (see his speech at the EP in EUROPE of 16 March, p.13). Will there be discussion on immigration in this context? To this question, Mr Prodi answered no to a Polish journalist and repeated that he hopes the problem will be handled with greater "serenity". "I do not believe there will be a huge inflow of immigrants from candidate countries but, if the German and Austrian public are frightened this will happen, I do not see how one can avoid taking it into account", he added. As he said, regarding Poland's request to introduce an 18-year moratorium on land purchase, he does not imagine there will be a rush to buy up Polish land.
Is the satellite system Galileo not one of your priorities for Stockholm? "Yes, it is, and we are working on it right now, and I hope that British and Dutch reservation will be lifted, reservation that I consider more political than economic", affirmed Mr Prodi, who stressed the importance of Galileo for the EU's future role in the "scientific, economic and military" fields.
By the end of the year, said Romano Prodi, we should also have a regulatory framework for telecommunications and mobile telephony (the situation is chaotic, although it is an area in which Europe is in the lead", he said (see below).
Prodi stresses the mutual interest of the EU and Russia in economic reform
Answering questions on talks scheduled in Stockholm with President Putin, Mr Prodi said that "we need a clear framework" for economic reforms in Russia, reforms that will lead to an "investment process by our companies" in the country. The mutual interest in reforms is obvious, noted Prodi, stating that, in Stockholm there would also be question of environmental problems (notably in St-Petersburg) and Keliningrad (which, he remarked, has borders with two countries which will soon be members of the Union), and that "we shall also, obviously, talk about Chechnya and human rights" with the Russian President.