Brussels, 14/01/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Irish Presidency has reacted to the Commission's decision to present an appeal to the Court of Justice against the decisions of the Ecofin Council of 25 November on France and Germany's non-respect of the Stability Pact by publishing a press release by Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, which simply notes this decision, underlining the fact that the Commission is mainly invoking questions of procedure (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.6, and of 9 January, p.9, on the Presidency's intentions not to launch discussions on reform of the Pact).
Before discussing the matter with French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin in Brussels on Wednesday evening, Romano Prodi admitted to the European Parliament plenary on Wednesday morning, in answer to a question by Daniel Cohn-Bendit (see p.5): "the decision was a painful one, very difficult for me, I know there will be consequences but I had to take it, simply because laws must be obeyed". Along with our appeal, we have decided to make proposals to make the Pact more efficient in the future, he said (see p.10), noting: "I have gone a bit too far down this road many times, but I have never seen any openness on the part of the Finance Ministers on this". Mr Prodi asked Parliament to help him to make good proposals. When asked by the press, in Strasbourg on Wednesday, about the possibility of these proposals' focussing one excluding certain investments (especially those contributing to the Lisbon strategy) from the calculation of state deficit, Mr Prodi replied: no "innovative" proposal is either included or excluded for the time being. We will put all our energy into this work, he promised, because it is not simply a case of "adjusting the Pact by small manoeuvres", but it is an issue of European economic policy.
Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Pedro Solbes commented on the Commission's decision in a statement: "the co-ordination and monitoring of economic policies will not be an easy job after the events of 25 November. However, the Commission will do all in its power to guarantee that the Treaty and Pact are correctly applied. We will continue to base all our recommendations on solid economic analysis and the principle of equality of treatment. At the same time, we will bring an appeal before the Court of justice (...) in order to make sure that the procedures based on the Treaty are correctly applied in future. We are all aware that the content of the Ecofin Council's conclusions could have been adopted in the form of Council recommendations, which is what the Treaty calls for in this field. However, the Member States deliberately chose an intergovernmental position. This changes the nature of budgetary monitoring and it is therefore worthwhile to obtain a Court ruling to clarify how monitoring is to take place in future".
The Portuguese agency, Lusa, reported from Strasbourg that according to Community sources, six Commissioners have expressed reservations, even though there has been no vote on the Commission's decision. These are one German Commissioner (Mr Verheugen: see Europe of 13 January, p.10), both French ones, both British ones and the Portuguese one.
Reactions were strong in the countries which are directly involved, especially in Germany, where Finance Minister Hans Eichel stated in a press release that Ecofin's decisions were in line with the spirit and the letter of the Pact, and that he found it hard to grasp that the Commission had decided to contest them on a purely procedural basis. His French counterpart Francis Mer also said in a press release that Ecofin had respected the Pact, the validity of which had even "been reaffirmed".
At the same time, he made it clear that the appeal to the Court "must not hinder the necessary co-operation between the Institutions" or "the dialogue to deepen the co-ordination of economic policies in Europe". After a meeting with Guy Verhofstadt in Brussels on Tuesday evening (before his meeting with Mr Prodi on Wednesday), Jean-Pierre Raffarin simply said: "I respect the Commission's decision, but I am not worried about its outcome".
More candid critiques came from Heads of Government of other Member States. Whilst acknowledging that "the Commission's autonomy must be respected", Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt also said, following his meeting with Mr Raffarin: "but I do not think that a quarrel between the Council and the Commission is a good thing". His Luxembourg opposite number, Jean-Claude Juncker, said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk that the Commission had not done Europe a good turn, and that it would struggle to explain how its Court case would strengthen the Stability Pact. Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel said in an interview with Wednesday's Die Presse that even though he did not think Ecofin had behaved correctly on 25 November, nor did he think that the Commission had made the right decision in going before the Court.
Doubts abound in the Parliament, but there is some praise for Commission
Opinions differ in the European Parliament (see also yesterday's EUROPE, p.6). In the Socialist Group, Pervenche Bérès said that the Council had "manifestly infringed the Treaty", and that it was therefore "entirely normal for the European Commission", as guardian of the Treaty, to bring the case before the Court. However, she regretted the fact that it was the inaction of the Economy and Finance Ministers which had pushed the Commission to opt for a legal solution to a political problem, and called upon the Commission to "use its powers of initiative to ensure that the euro zone has economic policy tools". Another French Socialist, Harlem Désir, said "while the institutional battle goes on, the euro is rising and the European economy remains weak. We need a politically-run Europe, not conflicts of procedure, bringing decisions (...) to the Court, having abandoned the policy to a Central Bank which answers to no-one". Luxembourg Socialist Robert Goebbels said that the Commission has the right to go before the Court, but that its decision to do so ran the risk of a kind of "government of judges".
In the Liberal Group (see also Graham Watson's words in the debate on the Irish Presidency), the view of Briton Chris Huhne was also nuanced. Although he welcomed the European Commission's initiative on economic governance, he admitted: "my concern is that this appeal may end up poisoning the atmosphere in which all parties must get back round the table and agree on a credible budgetary framework". He feels that the Pact should now be made more credible, "with an agreement on the pace for countries to adjust their deficits once they have passed the 3% ceiling". Italian Paolo Costa, implicitly criticising the outgoing Ecofin President Giulio Tremonti, said: "this decision unfortunately reflects worse on Italy's six months (...) than did the failure of negotiations within the IGC. The Commission's appeal should be seen as an attempt to contain the Eurosceptic movement which November's Ecofin brought in, and call upon Member States enthusiastically to turn their strategies towards the pursuit of the common good".
Praise abounded, however, in the EPP-ED Group (especially CDU-CSU MEPs): Hartmut Nassauer (CDU) said that the Commission's action is consistent and will allow the matter to be cleared up. The Court, he said, is "the right body to take the final decision on which Institution of the Union has what competence in this decisive issue for the future of the Union as a whole. We feel strongly that this is the Commission, and not the Council".
In a television programme on Tuesday evening, former European Commission President Jacques Delors gave his negative opinion on the Commission's initiative. He said (our translation): "given the fact that the Stability Pact's position is incomprehensible from the citizens' point of view, had I been the Commission, I would not have appealed to the Court of Justice. I would have felt that this was too complex a problem, and that for the people, it would end up looking like a squabble between the Institutions, about power, and unrelated to the problems facing them: employment, unemployment, growth. I would not have made this decision. For my money, it was a mistake. The Commission must realise that it is out of favour, understand when attempts are being made to sideline you, as now. It has no army, it cannot force governments, and so it should pay attention, be at the service of governments, bring opinions closer together, reach consensus, and then propose new ideas. Sadly, this is not the case".