Brussels, 16/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, as part of the European Policy Center's "policy breakfasts", David O'Sullivan, Secretary General at the European Commission, outlined the Commission's priorities for 2003.
According to 2002, the balance sheet for 2002 can be summarised into two messages: the Prodi Commission has kept its promises and has demonstrated by its own work the central role that it has played in the institutional arena, especially when this involves the future or "thinking the unthinkable". 2003 can be characterised by the Commission's first programme established in the framework of enhanced institutional co-operation, even if Mr O'Sullivan regrets that the dialogue has not always been as "interactive" as they would have liked. Amongst some of the goals that the Secretary General highlighted were the completion of the work on the new rules on personnel. Mr O'Sullivan acknowledged that he was rather afraid that Member States did not entirely understand the political significance of these proposals and had only been concentrating on the short-term budgetary implications. In the context of the Union's external action, the Secretary General explained that the Union would have to enlarge further than its closest "ring of friends" and stressed the need to help the poorest countries.
Mr O'Sullivan pointed out the important role played by the Commission in the reflection on the Future of Europe and the "remarkable intellectual contribution" of "Penelope", the technical working paper put together at the request of President Prodi. Mr O'Sullivan emphasised that the success of the Convention's method was greater than had been expected, that it had been "treated seriously" by all Member States and had helped to get the idea of a IGC up and running "as soon as possible".
The Secretary General also responded to a number of questions on: the new financial perspectives - the Commission has not yet decided "how far it will go", explaining that ideally, it was the new Commission that had to deal with this issue but if we waited for it there was a risk of falling behind, therefore the Prodi Commission was "inevitably" going to examine the case in order to set up "some kind of framework, in order to trigger discussion; technology and research. Mr O'Sullivan agrees with the President of the Commission, who regularly stresses the vital importance of research in the future of Europe (see EUROPE 15 January p 10). Mr O'Sullivan also said that no real progress would be possible without an effective European level patent system.