| Berlin, Paris and London prepared an original dish for the European Union Today in Berlin there will be a meeting between German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac. At first glance, it is a rather ordinary event, of which there have been many in the past. But this is by no means the case, because the Troika meeting is taking place just two months before the May expansion of the European Union from 15 to 25 member countries, which raises many pressing questions.
At the beginning of the week, information leaked from Berlin government sources that the Federal Chancellor of Germany, together with the leaders of Great Britain and France, had decided to reform the European Commission, which in recent years has become a textbook example of European bureaucratic clumsiness. Today in Berlin, criticism of Brussels officials will take on very concrete outlines: Schröder, Blair and Chirac are expected to announce that in their legislative initiatives, European officials do not pay due attention to the interests of the industry.
A year ago, signed by the same “troika,” a letter was sent to Brussels calling for “radical measures” to ensure “the international competitiveness of European industry.” However, no radical changes occurred. What became the reason for the new European initiative of Chancellor Schröder and the other two leaders of the countries of “old Europe” who joined him.
The essence of the initiative is the requirement to establish a new post of “super commissioner” for industry and competitiveness issues in the European Commission. According to plans developed in Berlin, one should appear next fall, marking the beginning of a comprehensive restructuring of the Brussels administration. Personally, we are talking about the German Social Democrat Günther Verheugen, who is now in charge of EU enlargement issues. At the same time, decision-makers in Berlin diplomatically talk about “food for thought” regarding the prospects for concentrating “disparate” interests “in one person.”
Currently, all these different tasks that one super-commissioner will have to deal with are placed on the shoulders of at least four European officials - Frits Bolkenstein (intra-European market), Margot Wallström (environment), Pascal Lamy (trade) and Erkia Lykkenen (industry).
For their attack on Brussels, Schröder, Blair and Chirac enlisted serious support from the industry itself. It is expected that today the bosses of the five largest European automobile concerns - including the head of the German Volkswagen Bernd Pischetsrieder - will turn to the Chairman of the European Commission Romano Prodi with similar proposals in support of the Berlin Three. Chancellor Schröder has already stated that he will strive for the German “super commissioner” to simultaneously become deputy chairman of the European Commission.
The intention of the three countries to form a kind of “solid core” in the European Union encountered sharp criticism from a number of states of both the “new” and “old” United Europe. The conservative prime ministers of Spain and Portugal sent a letter to Brussels criticizing German-Anglo-French separatism. This message was also signed by the leaders of Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Estonia. They recalled that the European Union can only function on the basis of “the equality of its member countries.” And Portuguese Prime Minister Durao Barosso, in one of his last speeches, warned against the “Balkanization” of the European Union. The Portuguese explained this extraordinary statement of his as follows: “You cannot expect that three countries will first set food on the table for others, and then ask whether they like it.” Yuri Shpakov, Berlin |
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