Brussels, 18/02/2004 (Agence Europe) - Some members of the European Parliament reacted very heatedly at the holding of the important tripartite summit in Berlin between Germany, France and the United Kingdom. CDU MEP Elmar Brok, president of the foreign affairs committee was unhappy with the decision of Chirac, Schröder and Blair proposing that the next European Commission creates a "Super Commissioner" in charge of the main economic dossiers (EUROPE yesterday p 5). "These good sirs would be better off dealing with the failure of the IGC", exclaimed Brok in a press statement in which he also described the initial decision on the composition of the Commission as equivalent to removing the power of the president and Commission.
Graham Watson president of the Liberal group, conceded that the fact that France, United Kingdom and Germany sought closer European coordination "in European matters might once have been cause for satisfaction" but he was keen to point out that the tone of the leaders today was "defensive": "The self-styled European pioneers in Berlin seem more concerned with preserving their prerogatives than providing directions for the EU"…Rather than seeking to throw their weight around in the Council to the exclusion of smaller countries, the three would be advised to lead by example".
The three countries obviously sought to dissipate the view that they were aiming to create a "directoir". Berlin pointed out that it was clearly up to the next president of the European Commission to decide on the distribution of the Commissioners' different portfolios. Andrew Smith, minister for employment and pensions accompanying Tony Blair, said, according to Reuters, that it was nonsense to talk about "directoires" and that "in an EU of 15, soon to be 25, it would be surprising if different groups of people didn't meet from time to time".
This was not on, according to Silvio Berlusconi, who asserted that the summit was a "big mess", adding that this opinion was "completely shared by other European countries, with the exception of the three countries involved". (The Italian prime minister addressed a letter signed by five other heads of state to the Irish presidency and European Commission in view of the European Spring Council: EUROPE yesterday p 8,. In the Corriere della Sera indicated that the Italian defence minister Antonio Martino had been called on to prepare a "positive response" to the Franco-German-British project on a European rapid deployment force - an obvious attempt at improving contact with the "three".
Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, on the contrary, admitted that he had nothing against it and he was not worried about it. He said that Denmark participated in meetings with other Member States. He informed the press that there should not be groups of big countries against small ones, north against south or east against west but the three countries which said that they wanted to have the right to exchange their points of views before the big meetings of the European Union was quite normal.
In Spain, the PSOE secretary for international policy, Manuel Marin (former European Commissioner) posed the question on Tuesday in Oviedo, according to EFE, as to what the London-Madrid axis was. He averred that it was likely that in the future, being in Berlin would prove more useful than being in the Azores (allusion to the meeting ion the Iraq crisis in March 2003 in the Azores between George Bush, Tony Blair and José Maria Aznar).