Brussels, 30/04/2004 (Agence Europe) - During a conference at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, on 27 April in Brussels, the European Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, put ten recommendations to Romano Prod's successor. Recalling that he had from the outset made it clear he would only be staying at the Commission for one term (he is governor at Oxford University), Mr Patten noted: "I believe I have had the most interesting though certainly not the most important job in the Commission". According to the former Governor of Hong Kong, who has served as Conservative Environment Minister and was in charge of pacification policies in Northern Ireland (and who said in passing that Javier Solana had become a "real friend"), the EU has in some ways become a victim of its own success over recent years. Also, it is a paradox, he continued, that the European Commission has suffered a sort of "unremitting gloom" despite the "golden period of achievements". In his view, the real problem is that a "number of key Member States no longer have a clear idea of what they want from the EU" (he cited his own, which "continues to have a semi-detached view of the EU"). On the subject of the suggestion that "small groups of pioneer countries" should be created in Europe, he warned that, although it may be desirable to have flexible arrangements, "flexibility requires stronger institutions, not weaker ones".
Mr Patten makes ten recommendations that he puts to Romano Prod's successor: - concentrate on delivering substance without being "afraid if others have ideas too"; - "go with the flow of the institutional debate", by contributing actively in laying the groundwork "'without aggressively overstepping" the limited competence of the Commission (example: security and armaments); - exploit the Community method where it exists, by agreeing to "operate within a political framework established by Member States" (the European Council is seeking to establish "greater strategic direction for the Union" and, he says, if this can help to bolster the democratic legitimacy of the Union, all institutions will emerge stronger); - be open to new ways of working (for example by resisting the temptation of measuring success only in terms of number of regulations passed onto the statute book); - develop the better regulation initiative launched in 2002; - concentrate on getting economic management right: e.g. better links between the rules for public finances and the broad economic policy guidelines (Ed.: as announced by Commissioner Solbes and then Commissioner Almunia); - put more emphasis on monitoring implementation and enforcement of legislation; - be ready to "pull out or scale down policies that do not work"; - get the Commission's internal organisation right, mainly through "genuine clusters of Commissioners"; - and get out there and demonstrate to the public that the Union makes a difference to people's lives.