Just as we anticipated. Jean-Claude Juncker started his Presidency of the Council in the best way possible. Need I remind you of the reasons why he is the ideal President, at this point in time?
he is, at the same time, the President of the Summit (European Council), of the Economy/Finance Council and of the Eurogroup for two years, thus guaranteeing coherence and cohesion in community activities;
he is, by far, the head of government with the longest personal experience of attending summits, and he knows their workings, mysteries and nuances inside-out;
he is free to exercise his European Presidencies virtually full-time, as the management of the internal affairs of his country is not excessively time-consuming. His timetable for this week, for example, looks something like this: on Monday, he met the full European Commission; in Strasbourg on Tuesday and Wednesday he presented his programme to the European Parliament (first discussing it with the conference of the presidents, then in the plenary); in Frankfurt on Thursday, he took part in the meeting of the Council of Governors of the European Central Bank (ECB).
Clear choices. This objectively favourable situation would lose much of its meaning if Mr Juncker didn't have the personal qualities which allow him to take full advantage of this and the conviction needed to manage the dossiers from a truly European point of view. Long experience (this is Luxembourg's eleventh Presidency) teaches us that Luxembourg's compromises on controversial dossiers are usually very well balanced, as the little Grand Duchy has a limited number of national interests at stake and is well aware that "common interest is the best definition of everyone's interest". This natural tendency towards compromise, which is even more evident in the field of the economy due to the balance Mr Juncker has always endorsed (and applied at national level) between market rules and social protection, does not stop him from taking a clear line on things when he has to. I would like to quote two examples of this. On corporate taxation (involving the thorny issue of tax competition between the Member States with its repercussions on company delocalisation), he spoke out clearly in favour of a dual approach: harmonisation of the tax base coupled with a minimum tax rate. This despite the European Commission's leaning towards the proposal Frits Bolkestein brought to the fore within the Prodi Commission, against any harmonisation of rates. The second example relates to the draft directive on the liberalisation of services, which Mr Juncker intends to put right back on the drawing board (see this column of 14 December), without sharing the feeling of urgency of the Dutch Presidency regarding its approbation (which didn't stop the previous Presidency from managing the dossier objectively having taken note of the numerous objections and misgivings).
It is not my intention to review the Luxembourg Presidency's entire programme, because Mr Juncker's presentation before the European Parliament was summed up in EUROPE of 13 January, p.9 and 10, and our bulletin has also taken stock of various sectorial programmes. I will just reiterate the clear and unambiguous words with which Mr Juncker a) demonstrated his commitment to the "Community method" for institutional affairs, by stressing the "institutional triangle" of the Commission, Parliament and Council; b) stressed that "no Presidency will succeed without approaching problems jointly with the Commission"; c) rejected the term "Monsieur Euro", which he had been mischievously labelled with.
A mischievous label. On this last point, I owe Mr Juncker what amounts to personal thanks, because I was practically the only one (well, ECB President Mr Trichet and I) to protest about this name, because it distorts the whole point of the two-yearly presidencies of the Eurogroup. The role entails gradually bringing the two planks of economic and monetary union (EMU) together, by making economic governance just as important as monetary governance (by the ECB). It's not a Monsieur Euro we need, there's one of those already in Frankfurt, but a driving force for economic cohesion. Unfortunately, the name seemed to stick (even the president of the European Parliament used it!); fortunately, the man in question put us all straight: "I never asked for this title. We must organise dialogue between the economic pole of the EMU and its monetary pole". What Mr Juncker is calling for is for the Eurogroup (the group of countries which are members of the single currency) to have the "opportunity to enter useful dialogue with the ECB on various aspects of monetary policy". He defined what he means by "useful dialogue"; I will come back to this.
Mr Juncker confirmed that his three priorities are changes to the Stability Pact, the revision of the Lisbon Strategy and the political agreement on the multi-annual financial perspectives. He made it clear where he stands on each of these points. I will talk about this in detail next week. (F.R.)