ENERGY, climate, migration, security and defence and the Common Agricultural Policy are the main priorities which France will concentrate on upon assuming the six-month EU Presidency on July 1.
Speaking to the media yesterday, French Ambassador to Cyprus Nicolas Galey presented his country’s objectives.
He also said that two major principles are to guide the country. The first is working collectively. “It is the collective dimension that we want. We want to listen to others – partners but also civil society and other EU institutions, in particular the European Parliament.”
“Our objective of consultation was shown with the numerous visits made in all EU countries before our presidency started. In Cyprus, the Prime Minister as well as the ministers for European Affairs, Immigration, Agriculture and Defence made visits between April and the end of June.”
According to Galey, the second principle is to anchor the French presidency as much as possible in ordinary life.
“It is essential for the French presidency to strengthen the links to the actual day-to-day lives of European citizens. If we don’t, there’s a risk of progressively increasing the divide between the European authorities and European citizens. This is absolutely critical.”
This is the twelfth time that France will hold the EU presidency. “The world has considerably changed in 50 years. A united Europe remains as necessary as half a century ago, even though the reasons may not be the same,” explained the Ambassador.
“What certainly stands is the conviction that Europe is more than an economic and commercial association of countries; that we want to share a common destiny because of common interests, certainly, but also common values and the basic concept of solidarity between members, leading them to build common policies on an increasing number of subjects.”
One of the objectives of the French Presidency is to build a Europe where European citizens are stakeholders, a Europe which addresses their direct concerns through measures.
“In short, Europe should not be only the anonymous body which is given responsibility for what is going wrong but also, and primarily, a range of institutions and actions which deserves the credit of making citizens’ life better,” said Galey.
He then went into further detail on the country’s main priorities.
Regarding the energy-climate package and EU energy policy, he said that this is a subject on which the European Parliament is already largely mobilised.
“The French Presidency’s ambition, determined by the conclusions of the last European Council meeting in March, is to arrive at a political agreement in the Council on the entire package this year.”
The second priority concerns migration. “Europe is subject to substantial demographic and economic pressures. We need to see how far we can improve the harmonisation and sharing of our policies on asylum applications and reception and integration, as well as our concrete actions to combat illegal immigration and advance shared development.”
The third priority concerns European security and defence. Europe, a major industrial, agricultural, economic and financial power, “is not the global player it should be in the world today”.
“The European security strategy should be updated to take into account the EU’s enlargement since 2003 and new concerns such as food security, energy security, non-proliferation and cyber-defence.”
The final priority will cover the Common Agricultural Policy. In the current global environment of heightened food imbalances and the surge in certain product prices, “the aim is to define certain common principles for the CAP of the future,” said the Ambassador. “Correction of world food imbalances, environment, geographical balances, food quality.”
He also mentioned a project that was proposed during the first days of President Sarkozy’s mandate election, which is the Union for the Mediterranean. France will hold a summit this Sunday, where President Demetris Christofias will attend.
“What the Union aims at is developing concrete regional projects involving the Member States and the southern Mediterranean countries on a voluntary basis.”
For the sake of coherence and continuity, EU presidencies are now working as ‘Trios’. Every 18 months, the three Presidencies due to hold office shall prepare a draft programme of Council activities for that period.
Therefore, also attending yesterday’s event in Nicosia were the ambassadors of the Czech Republic and Sweden, who will hold the presidency in 2009.
