Brussels, 16/10/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, the European Council approved the list of the 12 people making up the reflection group on the future of Europe, chaired by the former Spanish prime minister, Felipe Gonzales. The other 11 members are: Vaira Vike-Freiberga (Latvia, vice chair of the group), Jorma Ollila (Finland, vice chair of the group), Lykke Friis (Denmark), Rem Koolhaas (Netherlands), Richard Lambert (United Kingdom), Mario Monti (Italy), Rainer Münz (Austria), Kalypso Nocolaïdis (Greece), Nicole Notat (France), Wolfgang Schuster (Germany) and Lech Walensa (Poland).
The group will begin its work as soon as possible in view of presenting its final report during the June 2010 European Council. The group's mandate, approved by the December 2007 European Council, stipulates that the group's objective is to help the EU to pre-empt and more effectively tackle long term difficulties up to 2020-30. Taking the “Berlin Declaration” of 25 March 2007 as a starting point (adopted at the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome), the group says that it will seek to “identify the key issues and developments which the Union is likely to face and to analyse how these might be addressed”. The mandate says that the group must not talk about institutional questions because this will “undermine its reflections with the framework set out in the Lisbon Treaty”. (H.B./transl.rh)