Brussels, 25/03/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Council of Brussels is expected to adopt a solidarity clause for the draft constitutional treaty and reach consensus on the European constitution. These are the main goals of the EPP-ED group at the European Parliament on the eve of the Spring summit at its two study days in Vienna during which the group continued to call for an agreement on the EU constitution before the June European elections. The EPP-ED also hopes that the Lisbon strategy will be "revitalised" at Brussels.
With the war on terrorism being one of its main themes at the study days, the EPP-ED appealed for more security at the EU. On Tuesday, the Austrian Chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel regretted that they were often eager to respond instead of having a European preventive response. Schüssel seized the occasion to repeated the position of his country with regard to new EU measures following the Madrid attacks of 11 March.
He feels that the idea of creating a security co-ordinator of "a sensible proposal", but the creation of a European information agency "would be a much better solution" (see yesterday's EUROPE, P.5). The Group's President, the German Hans-Gert Pöttering, spoke of the "total solidarity of the EPP-ED with our Spanish friends". The EU must "fight terrorism decisively" and adopt the solidarity clause, he said, speaking in favour of a communitisation of Europol, the European Police Office.
The EPP-ED also spent a long time debating economic growth in the European Union, and calling for the implementation of concrete measures to "boost the Lisbon strategy". Austrian Othmar Karas said "we need a timetable and clear plans of action". The Vice-President of the EPP-ED, the Dutch Wim Van Velzen, said that "European governments should present national plans showing clearly whether the objectives set in Lisbon have been met".
In a consensual climate within the EPP-ED, Jaime Mayor Oreja, former Spanish Minister for the Interior and current President of the PP group in the Basque Parliament, took the opportunity of the debate on the fight against terrorism to defend his hypothesis that it was the attacks on Madrid rather than the behaviour of the outgoing government, that "dictated" the results of the elections in Spain. Without "demonising public opinion", Mr Oreja consistently affirmed that "the attacks determined the elections", a theory which was defended by, amongst others, Wilfried Martens, EPP President. As to whether the EPP-EU intended to debate the results of the elections in Spain and the Aznar government's reaction to the attacks, Hans-Gert Pöttering referred to the packed timetable of his group. "We would have liked to discuss the results of the elections in Spain and France, but this has not been possible this week, with our timetable", he said at a press lunch, adding that this debate will take next week (mainly Thursday) in Strasbourg.