Brussels, 12/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The countries candidates for membership of the European Union will be present at the Barcelona Summit to debate economic reforms in Europe in the framework of the Lisbon Strategy. The Heads of State and Government, Foreign Ministers and Ministers of the Economy of the thirteen candidate countries will meet their counterparts from the Fifteen on 15 March. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar wrote to them on Saturday to invite them to Barcelona. "Given their experience and their willingness for change and adaptation, the candidate countries have a lot to contribute to the reform process we are pursuing", the President-in-Office of the European Council writes in his letter. Efforts made by the candidate countries these past few years "to restructure and modernise their markets and consolidate their social systems … could not correspond better to the "spirit of Lisbon" and are proof of what can be attained by all when there is the necessary political will", he continues. The candidate countries must begin "to participate in the Lisbon Strategy and familiarise themselves with its procedures and objectives".
A working session between the Heads of State and Government of Member States and candidate countries, "wholly devoted to the exchange of opinions on the Lisbon Strategy" will be held on 15 March, between 11.30 and 13.30 hrs., in the framework of the Summit. At the same time, the Foreign Ministers and Ministers of the Economy of the candidate countries will have two meetings "dealing respectively with Lisbon's external dimension and the introduction of the Lisbon objectives in the candidates' economic policy and structural reforms.