Brussels, 20/04/2004 (Agence Europe) - At the annual meeting of the Advisory Council of the European Policy Centre (EPC) set up by Stanley Crossick, the president of the Council Peter Sutherland (former Irish European Commissioner and former director general of GATT/WTO) welcomed the recent progress on the European constitution but considered that it was necessary to "develop institutional responses" before the entry into force of the constitution. He stated that they had to check "what can be brought into effect earlier rather than later, admitting that "we have a problem with public opinion". On the subject of the referendums, Sutherland said that "my little country knows a lot about it" and exclaimed that in this kind of exercise he would not like in the event of the IGC being successful that they were compelled to spend a year waiting for the changes (up to now seven countries, now with the addition of the United Kingdom, have announced a referendum on the European constitution: Ireland, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and the Czech Republic: see above).
Mr Sutherland also illustrated a "sense of a disintegrating Commission". He said that they "cannot have a disintegrating Commission" and need a new dynamism and sense of "leadership" from Brussels. This also applied to the Lisbon Strategy, he said, on which the Advisory Council had discussed at length on Wednesday morning with Paavo Lipponen, president of the parliament and former Finnish prime minister (on of the possible candidates for the presidency of the European Commission: Editor's note). With regard to the pessimism expressed by certain quarters about the current economic situation in Europe, Sutherland said that if the European economy was slowing, it was due in large part to the three main economies of the Union, whereas certain small countries, (Ireland, for example or the countries of the "Nordic area", like M Lipponen's country, were prospering).
With regard to the EU/USA relationship, Sutherland considered that both in the Iraqi affair and the Israel/Palestinian conflict, there had certainly been a failure of diplomacy on both sides" whereas it was still possible to have a more constructive dialogue with Washington. He affirmed that EU external policy had been obliged to recognise division among Europeans on certain crucial issues, whereas members of the EU had tackled 52 themes relating to CFSP last year and that that they had agreed on all of them.