From 1 July to 31 December 2008, France will organise and chair the European Council meetings. It will take over Slovenia and will hand over to the Czech Republic in 2009.
The French government has already announced that its motto will be "a more protective Europe". The concept of ’protecting Europe’ was introduced by Jean-Pierre Jouyet, Secretary of state for EU affairs, at a conference organised by social NGO "Sauvons l’europe" in October 2007. The idea is to defend Europe’s social and economic model from the pressures of globalisation.
A Presidency punctuated with major milestones
The Treaty’s ratification procedure has already been completed in France and Paris will play a key role in ensuring that ratification goes smoothly in all other EU countries so as to ensure that the new Treaty can come into force, as planned, immediately after the French Presidency in January 2009.
The international agenda is also very loaded. 2008 is punctuated with the Russian and American elections as well as the Olympic Games in Peking.
A citizens-oriented Presidency
Jean-Pierre Jouyet, Secretary of state for EU affairs, affirmed his will to involve local authorities, associations and all citizens during the French Presidency. This will be done through various events labelled PFUE.
However, the exact role of the civil society has been yet clearly defined. Out of the 8 events originally planified, only 4 have been confirmed. EPHA will take an active in the one held in La Rochelle on 4-6 September 2008.
EPHA urges the French Presidency to further involve civil society organisations in the decision making process. What about taking this opportunity to improve the transparency of the EU Council?
The major priorities of the Presidency
Climate change and energy
France wants to make Europe a global model for environmental protection. It intends to take advantage of its role as EU President to influence the outcome of a major UN climate change conference that will take place in Poznan, Poland, in December 2008. The meeting will be key to deciding on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which the US is still refusing to sign.
France is also eager to make its case for nuclear power as a crucial energy source in the fight against climate change and will be pushing to ensure that climate mitigation measures adopted at EU level do not harm European companies’ competitiveness. However, the incident at a nuclear power plant in Slovenia has brought renewed attention to the debate over nuclear energy.
In January 2008, the Commission presented a major "energy-climate package", with the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020. The package proposes a review of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme while setting targets for the development and introduction of renewable energies, including biofuels.
A political agreement is due on this set of proposals under the French Presidency.
Defending the Common Agricultural Policy
Amid highly controversial negotiations over the EU’s financial perspectives for 2007-2013, EU leaders agreed to carry out, in 2008, a "health check" of the Common Agricultural Policy - which currently eats up nearly half of the bloc’s total budget.
On the insistence of France, which is one of the EU’s largest farming nations, the debate on the Commission’s initial proposals to review the CAP will be initiated under the French Presidency on 21-23 September 2008.
The country’s main concern is to avoid a major overhaul of the current system that would lead to a radical decrease in the level of spending. Indeed, France’s farmers and rural population are large beneficiaries of European subsidies.
French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier appears to hope the current global food crisis and soaring commodity prices will help him in defending the current model.
However, a public policy like the CAP should promote the common good, as defined by consumers and taxpayers and society as a whole. It should definitely not contribute to the impairment of public health and a loss of welfare to society. The CAP continues to be dominated by vested interests, which in a number of instances contribute to the poverty of developing countries, oppose the interests of consumers, damage the environment, hurt smaller farms, create inequity among Member States and threaten public health. One of the most unquestionable examples is the 1 billion EU subsidies for tobacco farming.
Indeed, according to the last Eurobarometer [1], 42% of European citizens consider that “ensuring that agricultural products are healthy and safe” is one of the main priorities for European Union agricultural policy. However, only 12% consider that the CAP “is performing well in doing so.”
EPHA urges the Commission to adapt the CAP to take account of the requirements of public health nutrition and thus to seek to move policy towards: − abolition of all subsidy on beef production, except that there might be some encouragement for such production in future to concentrate on high quality grassfed cattle; − abolition of all subsidy on dairy production, except that there might be some encouragement to farmers to produce milk with a lower fat contentious; − provision of dairy products to the not-for-profit sector (if any) should consist exclusively of skimmed mild products; − subsidy should be utilised to increase EU production of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated vegetable oils; − a substantial increase in production of fruits and vegetables; − subsidy towards increased production of vegetable protein and of fish, especially from fish farming; − continuation of encouragement to the cereal sector to produce products suitable for human consumption.
Other dossiers will include a European immigration pact, an EU Defence Union, the Economic policy, and the Foreign policy.
EPHA hopes that public health will not be forgotten, and looks forward to French leadership on the challenging issues emerging later this year, such as the Pharmaceutical regulations proposal, the Patient Rights directive, the Green Paper on Professional Mobility, as well as the increasing pressure from climate change and the food crisis.
For further information
The French Presidency website: http://www.ue2008.fr/
The provisional calendar for the second half of 2008
The calendar of events for July
Paroles d’Européens
EPHA related articles
The future of the Common Agriculture Policy on the agenda of the French Presidency
Commission defends biofuels in face of mounting criticism
