EU Leaders Open Reform Summit in Barcelona

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, March 16, 2002

EU Leaders Open Reform Summit in Barcelona

European Union (EU) leaders opened their summit Friday to focus on the 15-nation bloc's market economy reforms and address other regional or hot- spot issues of common concern.

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European Union (EU) leaders opened their summit Friday to focus on the 15-nation bloc's market economy reforms and address other regional or hot- spot issues of common concern.

EU leaders pledged at their Lisbon summit in March 2000 to make Europe the world's most strongest economy by 2010. Now in Barcelona, the second largest Spanish city, their main task is to revive the reforming process set in Lisbon. But no breakthrough is expected to be made at the summit. However, "any agreement will be worth a headline because it will be an advance, be it a mile or a millimeter," local newspaper El Pais said in a signed article. The leaders are also expected to issue a strong statement on the Middle East issue after they discuss the escalating violence in the region, EU sources said. Keen to play a bigger role in resolving the regional conflict, the EU will call for security measures on the ground, voice support for peace proposals from Saudi Arabia and stress that the EU regards Yasser Arafat as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians, the sources said.

The two-day Barcelona summit will focus on reformation of the labor, energy and financial markets aimed at removing the remaining national barriers and forging a truly common European market. The Spanish, British and Italian governments are strong proponents of liberal, free-market reforms, but other countries such as France and Belgium fear a "race to the bottom," where Europe's social safeguards would be jettisoned in the interests of cutting business costs.

Electoral prospects in the EU's locomotive couple of France and Germany this year look set to temper the summit's achievements, although a compromise on the fraught issue of opening up energy markets appears to be emerging, observers here believe.

Scaling down hopes for competition in the electricity and gas markets for all users, Spain now seems resigned to presiding over a deal which would open the market only for business users. European Commission President Romano Prodi said earlier this week that if the summit is not to end as a failure, then the EU leaders must set a detailed timetable for the liberalization of energy markets and make a "political pledge" to follow it through.

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