When Spain took over the European Union’s six-month presidency from Sweden on January 1, it inherited much more than the usual catalogue of economic and foreign policy challenges.
For Spain is the first country to hold the reins under the EU’s Lisbon treaty, a set of institutional reforms designed to strengthen the bloc’s decision-making procedures and, in certain respects, to downgrade the role of the rotating presidency.
The EU now has its first full-time president, Belgium’s Herman Van Rompuy, and a new foreign policy supremo, the UK’s Lady Ashton. Under the Lisbon treaty, it is this pair – plus José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president – that are intended to be the EU’s public face.
Yet Spain’s ruling socialists would be less than human if, unlike all national leaders who have held the rotating presidency before them, they resisted the temptation to extract some political capital from their moment in the sun.
As a result, Spain is expected to tread a careful path over the next six months, working energetically with other countries to make a success of the EU’s new rules, but injecting enough distinctively Spanish elements into its presidency to win favour with domestic public opinion.
“National governments are not ready to give up the opportunity to demonstrate to their own public and to the outside world that they are [co-]leading the EU – even if this opportunity only arises once every 14 or more years in a EU of 27-plus members,” Antonio Missiroli and Janis Emmanouilidis of the European Policy Centre think-tank wrote in a report last month.
For example, Spain will host a summit in May with Latin American countries in Madrid. It is also planning the European Union’s first ever summit with Morocco. The two events illustrate Spain’s emphasis on EU relations with its Mediterranean neighbours and its former Latin American empire.
On the other hand, Spain is keen to help Lady Ashton rapidly build up the EU’s external action service, a type of pan-European diplomatic corps intended to project the EU’s global influence more effectively.
“Today [the EU is] not a global player. We have some expressions of foreign policy. We have approved some important (security and peacekeeping) missions. We have adopted some common political positions. But we do have not have a real external policy in Europe,” says Diego López Garrido, Spain’s EU affairs minister.
The downgrading of the rotating presidency is reflected in the fact that Mr Van Rompuy, rather than José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, will chair EU summits of heads of state and government. Lady Ashton will chair meetings of EU foreign ministers – but in her absence Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain’s foreign minister, will replace her.
As far as the eurozone is concerned, the key figure will not be Elena Salgado, Spain’s finance minister, but Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker, who has the formal title of president of the eurogroup, which brings together the area’s 16 countries.
Behind the scenes, however, Spain will by no means lose influence over EU policymaking. EU leaders have agreed that the country holding the six-month presidency should continue to chair the weekly meetings of EU ambassadors where many of the policy compromises essential to the bloc’s operations are forged.
Moreover, except for those related to foreign policy, Spain will chair all the numerous working groups and committees that prepare EU initiatives in fields ranging from environment and transport and health.
Spain expects to play a prominent role in pushing forward a new 10-year EU plan for jobs, economic growth and innovation, dubbed the “2020 strategy” and likely to be adopted in March.
The final summit of Spain’s presidency in June will see the presentation of a report on the EU’s long-term future – as far ahead as 2030 – that is being prepared by a group of experts led by Felipe González, Spain’s former prime minister.
“Spain will not abandon its responsibilities,” says Mr Moratinos. “But we will do it with modesty, with discretion.”
Source:ft.com
