Strasbourg, 14 January 2003

SUMMARY MINUTES of the meeting on Tuesday, 7 January 2003 in the European Parliament

With a view to preparing its contributions to the European Convention, the European Parliament's Socialist Group organised a conference on "Europe in the World" on 7 January 2003.

Chaired by Pervenche Berès, Vice-President of the PES Group responsible for relations between the Group and Civil Society, this conference was centered on two round-tables: "Europe's presence in the world" and "Promoting development and solidarity".

Introducing the debate for the first round-table, Pascal Lamy, European Trade Commissioner, argued that today, among all areas of the EU's external action, it is its Trade Policy that works best.
This for two reasons :
in this field Europeans have a common ideological platform, based on the regulated opening of markets;
regarding decision-making procedures, this policy is governed by the Community method.

We should draw the necessary conclusions from this for the EU's external action in general, including diplomacy and security policy.
For Pascal Lamy, Europeans could unite on the project of building a more stable, fair and solidarity-based international order, which would in fact correspond to a projection of the European model to the outside. Starting from there, he sees no reason to "give a particular treatment" to the Union's external action regarding institutional arrangements.
"Do we want or not efficiency and legitimacy for the EU's external policies?" asked Pascal Lamy, stressing that if the answer is "Yes" the use of the Community method should be the logical conclusion.
Judging that the step to make towards a substantial EU foreign and security policy is "considerable", Pascal Lamy argued for a "step by step" approach based on a suppression of the traditional distinction between "High Politics" and other aspects of international relations.
Questioned on this subject by different Civil Society representatives, he made it clear that the Union should first define a common approach for external economic and financial matters and for areas such as health and food policy, of great importance for citizens in their daily life.
From there on, the Union could then take the step towards security policy more easily.

To conclude, he said he believed the European States' sovereignty in terms of foreign and defence policy not to be "more substantial today than it was in the field of economic and monetary policy before we launched the single currency".

Erika Mann, for her part, expressed her concerns about the erosion of parliamentary control at European level on external action matters, in particular regarding the common Trade policy. She therefore stressed the European Parliament's proposals on this issue:
ex ante consultation of the European Parliament for all Community legislation;
ex post assent of the European Parliament for all international agreements concluded in the field of the Common Trade Policy;
qualified majority voting within the Council of Ministers.

The second round-table - "Promoting development and solidarity" - saw the contribution of Simon Stocker, Director of Eurostep, a network of 19 European NGO's active in the field of development cooperation.

Mr Stocker raised his concerns about the current marginalization of development cooperation policy in the European Union, illustrated by the suppression of the "Development" Council. He argued for the preservation of a distinction between the objectives of this policy and the more general ones of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, stressing that development cooperation should be at the centre of the EU's relations with developing countries.
His concern was shared by several representatives of Civil Society, among them Dieter Frisch, Vice-president of Transparency International, as well as by Pervenche Berès, who said that a more offensive stance putting forward solidarity, risk prevention and long-term stability would be needed on this policy.

To conclude the conference, Pervenche Berès reminded the participants that, as Pascal Lamy had said, today there is no more "High politics" or "Low politics".
The priority being above all to increase the EU's efficiency and legitimacy in its external action, she added that strengthening of the European Parliament's powers in these areas would contribute to reaching these goals.