Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-17-Speech-3-184"
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"Madam President, President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, Europe has undergone unprecedented transformation in only the last decade. The Cold War has been replaced by cooperation. There has been an explosion in technical development, and our economies have become interlinked in a global market.
I shall begin with the issue of enlargement. No issue is so crucial to the EU’s future and to European development as welcoming new Members into the European Union. It is our opportunity to consolidate the basis for peace and freedom, democracy and prosperity in Europe. We are currently in the final stages of the historic process which will put a stop to the division of Europe into East and West. It is with humility, pride and a strong will that the Swedish Government wants to try to contribute to this work, this historic development.
During the French Presidency, the Intergovernmental Conference, designed to prepare the EU’s institutions for operating smoothly in an enlarged Union, was brought to a successful conclusion. An economic framework had already been established in Berlin in the spring of 1999. In Nice, it was made clear that the next Intergovernmental Conference would be neither an obstacle to, nor a precondition for, enlargement. There is still a lot of work to be done, but it should be possible to welcome new Member States after the end of 2002.
During the first six months of 2001, the enlargement process will enter a phase of practical negotiations in many areas. Sweden’s objective is to try to pave the way for a political breakthrough in the negotiations. The principle of differentiation will be one of the cornerstones of this work. Each applicant country must be judged on its own merits, and all must be given the opportunity of catching up.
Great progress has been made in the applicant countries. If, a breakthrough is to be achieved, however, the applicant countries will have to continue vigorously to implement reforms in order to fulfil the criteria for membership, and the Member States will have to be constructive in helping to take the negotiations forward. The Commission must facilitate the process. We must together strive to ensure that enlargement can go ahead with strong support from the citizens of the European Union.
The Swedish Presidency will take advantage of the opportunities to move forward more quickly with the best prepared applicant countries. In June 2001 in Gothenburg, the European Council will evaluate the progress made in the enlargement process and provide necessary guidelines for its successful conclusion.
Attention will continue to be given to the EU’s relationship with Turkey as an applicant country. Key tools in this area will be the entry into a partnership agreement with Turkey and Turkey’s presentation of its national programme for the adoption of the acquis.
There is still a lot of work to be done, but it should now be possible to welcome new Member States after the end of 2002. I hope that applicant countries will be able to take part in the elections to the European Parliament in 2004.
Another area to be given priority is employment. Unemployment in the EU countries is now falling, and more and more people are obtaining jobs. We must not, however, be content with this. There are still 14 million people in the EU without work.
Unemployment is an enormous waste of economic resources and – what is worse – of people’s skills and ambitions. Nothing is more important to the individual’s development and freedom than to have a job and be self-supporting. Nothing is more important for democracy and equality than work for all. A European Union that does not take unemployment seriously can never be the citizens’ Europe we all wish to see.
Sometimes, in the course of debate, the ambition of making the EU into an employment union has been described as nothing more than a pipe dream, but something new has happened in this area. In Lisbon in March of last year, the European Council set a new strategic goal for the European Union. Within ten tears, the EU is to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world. At the same time, it was made clear that full employment was to constitute a basic objective of the Union’s economic and social policy. I view this as great progress and these goals as incredibly important milestones in the development of the European Union.
It is no longer possible to single out the totalitarian regimes on the other side of the Iron Curtain as the chief threats to democracy and peace. Today, instead, the threat to democracy is growing from within the mature democracies themselves. This may be seen from the falling confidence in elected representatives, the decreasing number of people who vote in elections, electoral successes on the part of populist parties and the radicalisation of extreme right-wing movements.
Today’s Europe is better equipped than it has been for a very long time to extend the opportunity of work to everyone – those who want to work and are able to. The prospects for the European economy remain good. Public finances are strong. Prices are stable. Reforms of the product and capital markets have been initiated throughout Europe.
The route to full employment is via continued economic reforms, developed social security and strengthened welfare. It is also via investment in education and research, new technology and entrepreneurship, as well as investment in the environment and equality between men and women.
The European Council in Stockholm on 23 to 24 March will be the first in a series of spring summits designed to push development towards the goals set in Lisbon. In Stockholm, we ought, in an open and self-critical way, to assess the progress made. The work will be driven forward by Community law, where applicable, but mainly by the new open method of coordination. As the country holding the presidency, we shall endeavour not to undermine the Lisbon strategy by adding too many new issues. Nor do we need any new processes. Instead, the Stockholm Summit ought to identify certain priority areas.
We are in the middle of a period of extremely rapid development in which growth is driven more and more by brain power and less and less by muscular strength. At the same time, mobility is increasing. The most important competitive factors will be human capital in the case of companies and education in the case of employees. Health and medical care, education, training and other welfare services will be the competitive resources at national and local level.
The Swedish welfare model has always been based on the idea that equality and justice are productive in themselves and that development is that much stronger if everyone is given the opportunity to contribute to it and everyone shares in its benefits. Today, development shows that nations which have high levels of employment and well educated populations, which have succeeded in spreading technical development, which have a fair distribution of wealth and comprehensive welfare systems are also those countries which have developed furthest in the new technological sectors. Nations which do not make the most of the skills and creativity of all their citizens will lose out in terms of competitiveness.
To this must be added Europe’s expected demographic development. From around 2010 onwards, low birth rates and the growing number of elderly people threaten drastically to increase the number of people to be supported by people of working age. Demographic changes must be tackled on a broad political front. Comprehensive reviews of pension systems and of systems of health care and care of the elderly will be required. Measures will be required to increase participation in the labour market. The importance of improved conditions for families with children , of greater equality and of life-long learning ought to be clearly emphasised.
As more people obtain work, more and more attention will be focused on working conditions . The objective is to be able to agree upon a definition of the concept of quality at work and its importance for growth and employment.
We ought also, in Stockholm, to emphasise the importance of new technology by further developing the action plan for
Europe and paying more attention to the importance of biotechnology for innovation and growth.
I also want to emphasise how vitally important it is for stability and prosperity in Europe for economic and monetary union to be developed successfully. As the country holding the presidency, Sweden will actively work to ensure the unqualified success of the introduction of euro notes and coins which is to take place in the currency union at the beginning of 2002 and which is in our common interest.
The third important area is the environment. The major threats to the environment cannot be averted without active international cooperation. There must be deeper EU cooperation in the area of the environment. We must proceed on the basis of a holistic view of policy. The ecological perspective is often regarded as backward-looking, and the vision of the sustainable society as a vision in conflict with goals such as justice and increased material prosperity. That is a mistake. It is precisely the other way around.
Few of the major challenges we face in Europe are ones which we can solve entirely by ourselves in each individual nation. We are too dependent upon one another for that. The need for cooperation has never been greater. At the same time, I would venture to maintain that the prospects for cooperation have never been more promising, either.
By thinking in terms of recycling and by exploiting new research findings and new technology that saves on resources, it is now fully possible to use the earth’s resources without exhausting them. At the same time, these developments create unique opportunities for economic growth in new markets. There is enormous potential here and opportunities I want to see us make full use of. I want the EU to take the lead and point the way to development in which ecological, economic and social considerations combine to reinforce one another.
Environmental considerations must be integrated into all areas of EU cooperation. The EU’s sixth environmental action programme must be driven forward. It must apply for the next ten years and must be directed towards clear and carefully justified environmental goals and environmental indicators. The programme should be one of the bases for the overarching strategy for long-term sustainable growth to be adopted at the European Council summit in Gothenburg. This strategy should be focused upon a number of key areas in which we at present identify development as being unsustainable, as well as upon measures which can reverse the trend. The Commission will later present a proposal for such a strategy.
Attention must also be given to the rapidly growing chemicals market. Sweden will work to achieve a unified new strategy on chemicals in which the precautionary principle is an important point of departure.
Last but definitely not least, the climate issue as it relates to floods, earthquakes and melting ice. Few matters are as worrying as the risk that environmental damage is on the way to creating far-reaching and dangerous climate changes. The climate issue is central to the EU’s agenda, and we shall continue to give it priority. The climate negotiations must be resumed.
Environmental issues have a deep moral dimension. The earth is on loan to us from our children and grandchildren. Our generation’s task is to leave behind us a Europe in which the major environmental problems have been solved.
There are a number of points on which the new Treaty from Nice facilitates deeper and more effective cooperation. Closer cooperation between fairly small groups of Member States is made easier. Ever more decisions must be made by qualified majority voting and by means of a codecision procedure with the European Parliament. The issue of the position of the negotiating applicant countries in an enlarged EU has been clarified. I expect it to be possible for the new Treaty to be signed within just over a month. For their part, the Member States have already committed themselves to working for a rapid and successful ratification of the new Treaty.
The European Union is not static. Cooperation has its own dynamic. The Union is constantly faced with new challenges from the world around and from its own citizens. We also have good reason for discussing the way in which the European Union as a whole is structured.
In parallel with the Intergovernmental Conference which has now come to an end, a number of issues for the future were presented in the debate. That is why the special declaration in Nice about the EU’s future was appropriate. This prescribes a further Intergovernmental Conference in 2004 and calls upon the Swedish and the forthcoming Belgian presidencies to open a debate on issues for the future with all interested parties in 2001. This must take place in cooperation with the Commission and with the involvement of the European Parliament. Among the issues to be discussed during the process leading up to the next Intergovernmental Conference, four are specified: first of all, how a more precise division of powers between the Member States and the European Union is to be established and monitored; secondly, the status of the so-called Charter of Fundamental Rights; thirdly, how the Treaties might be simplified without their content being changed; and fourthly, the role of the national parliaments.
The Swedish Presidency sees encouraging a broader and more intensive debate in both the Member States and the applicant countries as an urgent and stimulating task. We expect the European Parliament to take an active part and to use its unique role in order to take initiatives of its own to encourage the debate. I hope that national parliaments and governments will also want to take suitable initiatives. We ought also to make special efforts to involve our young people, and we need to form a clearer picture of people’s view of future cooperation in the EU.
What we now call the EU was once formed in order to make war impossible on the European continent, and it has been extraordinarily successful in that respect. Conflicts nonetheless occur constantly in Europe and its vicinity. In the foreseeable future, the challenges for Europe in terms of security policy will be about managing crises and preventing conflicts. This requires a combination of civil and military crisis management tools. Close cooperation must also be developed between the UN and the OSCE.
The Swedish Presidency of the European Union has commenced at an important point in a period characterised by major changes and challenges in Europe.
The Swedish Presidency will give high priority to implementing the decisions made by the European Council in Nice concerning the European Union’s capacity for military and civil crisis management. The objective is that the European Union must take a decision to become operational in military and civil terms as soon as possible during 2001.
In the military sphere, it is firstly a question of establishing permanent structures, as well as of further pursuing the work being done on the cooperation arrangement between the EU and NATO.
In the civil area, we shall press on with the work on developing the capacity to plan and lead civil initiatives, initially in connection with the police. A special conference on the objectives in terms of police capacity to intervene will take place during the Swedish Presidency. Practical objectives will also be devised in order to strengthen the judicial system, civil administration and civil protection.
In tandem with the work on strengthening the EU’s crisis management capacity, Sweden will make significant efforts to work out a coordinated and effective EU policy for conflict prevention. We intend to develop a European programme for conflict prevention to be presented to the European Council in Gothenburg.
I know that the European Parliament has a strong interest in both crisis management and conflict prevention. You have devised valuable proposals, and important debates have been conducted in Parliament. I look forward to continued close cooperation.
Developments in Russia are important to the future of Europe as a whole. Europe and Russia need each other. High priority ought therefore to be given to deeper cooperation between the EU and Russia. At the same time, our relations must be characterised by candour and consistency, including a readiness to offer criticism when justified. This applies, for example, in the case of developments in Chechnya, which continue to give cause for deep concern, and also to the situation regarding the formation of independent opinion in Russia. The message from the EU should be that a genuine partnership must be founded upon the basis of common values. In a modern democracy, a strong State must be balanced by a strong civil society.
The presidency’s ambition is to pursue a policy vis-à-vis Russia aimed at both cooperation and honesty, with a view to achieving greater predictability and stability in our relations. Specifically, we want to see deeper dialogue between the EU and Russia on political, economic and legal issues. We want to develop cooperation in order to prevent conflicts, manage crises and promote disarmament and non-proliferation. We want to promote Russia’s integration into the world economy, partly by supporting the country in its endeavours to become a member of the WTO. We want to see more in the way of cooperation in order to meet the common challenges we face on our continent, including the threats to the environment and from international organised crime. We want to see continued support for reforms in Russia, especially with a view to reinforcing civil society and modernising the administration.
Considerable attention will also be given to the developments in the Western Balkans, in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula. In the case of the Western Balkans, it is really a question of crisis prevention, but also of economic reforms and financial initiatives. The region’s progressive rapprochement with the EU by means of stabilisation and association agreements is of central importance. If such a rapprochement is to become a reality, clear efforts at cooperation between the countries in the region is, however, required.
In the conflict in the Middle East, the European Union has played an important role in supporting the American peace efforts. During its presidency, Sweden will work for a continued active European role in the peace process.
In a few days’ time, a new American President will be sworn in. There are good opportunities for giving new impetus to cooperation with the United States. Trade issues and the implementation of the action plan within the Transatlantic Economic Partnership are central features of our collaboration. Outstanding disputes about trade policy must be resolved through mutually acceptable solutions but they must not overshadow the many common political interests and the rich dialogue we have with the United States.
The European Union is facing its largest round of enlargement to date. Once we have agreed upon the economic and institutional framework for this historic event, the real negotiations will start.
In a Union which puts the citizen first, political debate must be conducted openly and documents must be accessible. It must also be possible to keep track of the decision-making process and to hold those who take the decisions accountable. This will require ongoing work to make the EU a more open and more modern Union.
The Treaty of Amsterdam created a legal basis for rules governing public access to the institutions’ documents. Sweden attaches a great deal of importance to the work being done on the legal measure concerning transparency, which is to be adopted under this provision of the Treaty. The Commission, which – as part of its internal reforms – has taken a number of steps of its own towards increased transparency, has submitted a proposal on the matter. While the Council is at work on the measure concerning transparency, Sweden intends maintaining close contact with the European Parliament, which has shown great commitment to the issue of transparency. We intend to push this issue with a view to achieving a successful outcome by the spring.
As I mentioned in the introduction to my speech, the European Union’s basic values have been given a more central place in the Union’s activity. The successful work on the Charter of Fundamental Rights is an important expression of this. Consistent with this, the subject of human rights should be taken up more vigorously in the political dialogue with other countries designed to promote peace, as well as in agreements with countries outside the EU. The European Union must also take an active part in the UN Human Rights Commission and in the run-up to the forthcoming world conference in this area.
It is important that, through their directly elected representatives, Europe’s citizens should have influence upon, and insight into, European cooperation. The European Parliament has a central role in this respect.
The Swedish Presidency is keen to see good, close cooperation with Parliament during the next six months. We shall actively participate in the important European political dialogue taking place in this building, in this Parliament.
Important decisions lie before us. The future of Europe will be created through cooperation. Let us work together for a Europe of peace, freedom, prosperity and social cohesion.
The European Union has adopted a programme including new forms of cooperation with a view to becoming the world’s most dynamic and competitive economy. Full employment is one of our strategic objectives. In economic and monetary union we shall soon see the important introduction of euro notes and coins.
The issues close to people’s hearts are in ever clearer focus. The European Union is now an association of active welfare states. The insight is now growing that welfare does not put a brake on development but that, on the contrary, welfare and development are conditional each upon the other.
Sweden is now taking over the presidency for the first time. We must act in the interests of the whole of the European Union, ensure transparency and continuity and forge ahead with Europe's development. We also wish to consolidate the progress that has already been achieved. It is an honour for me, as Swedish Prime Minister, to be able to tell you about our work programme. I shall listen to your comments and points of view with the greatest interest.
We are going to give priority to three areas of the European Union’s extensive agenda: enlargement, employment and the environment. These are three extensive policy areas, each one of which is of crucial importance in determining how the future is going to turn out for Europe’s citizens."@en1
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