euro|topics - José Sócrates' challenges ahead

Main focus of Tuesday, July 3, 2007

José Sócrates' challenges ahead

Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates set out the objectives of the Portuguese presidency of the EU on Monday, July 2nd. Other than reforging the European constitutional treaty, immigration and the foreign relations of the Union with Africa and Latin America, will figure prominently among Lisbon's preoccupations.

Financial Times - United Kingdom

"Portugal's José Sócrates has taken over the EU chair for the next half-year, and must complete the job Ms Merkel started", writes the financial daily in an editorial. While keeping a reluctant Poland satisfied with the reform treaty will be difficult, "a new challenge looms for Portugal: not from Warsaw, but from Paris. Nicolas Sarkozy, France's feisty new president, was a useful ally to Ms Merkel in the treaty talks. But now he wishes to reopen more divisive issues, not least for France and Germany: strengthening the economic governance of the eurozone and seeking to define where the future borders of Europe lie. Keeping the peace between Berlin and Paris may be a greater challenge for Mr Sócrates than completing the reform treaty." (03/07/2007)

Diário de Notícias - Portugal

In its editorial, the Portuguese daily hopes that José Sócrates will be able to organise the Africa-EU summit during his tenure as President of Union, despite the thorny problems posed by Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. "The majority of the EU countries don't want Mugabe's presence. But the African Union demands that he be invited to the summit on December 8 and 9 in Lisbon. Certain countries have already announced that they will not attend if that is the case. But José Sócrates has repeated multiple times that the summit is a priority for the Portuguese presidency. ... The last summit took place in 2000, the one slated for 2003 never took place, already due to Mugabe. It is out of the question that Robert Mugabe uses the summit to bring his country out of its deserved isolation. If we succeed in preventing this from coming to pass, Portugal will have done a real favour to Europe and Africa." (03/07/2007)

Upsala Nya Tidning - Sweden

In two years' time Sweden will assume the rotating EU presidency, but the newspaper is already warning politicians to keep a close eye on developments: "First and foremost, work on the EU treaty must continue. This won't be easy following Poland's threat. Next on the list are negotiations with Ankara about Turkey's EU membership - here it's Sarkozy who's making difficulties. And as if that weren't enough, Portugal plans to hold the first-ever EU-Brazil summit, to take place parallel to a meeting with African leaders. The power struggle and the planning have just begun... The Portuguese face a complex situation and at the moment it remains unclear whether they will have the steady hands necessary to deal with it." (03/07/2007)

Népszabadság - Hungary

Balázs Pócs examines why after 21 years of EU membership Portugal is still perceived as Europe's poorhouse: "Why hasn't Portugal managed to achieve what Spain and Ireland, who joined later, have accomplished? According to Teixeira dos Santos, Portugal's minister of finance, the problem is that Portugal failed to push through tough reforms in the late 1990s, before the conversion to the euro. "At the time, the Portuguese were under the illusion that the country was well on its way to prosperity. Despite a growing budget deficit, governments neglected to introduce reforms for the sake of maintaining their popularity. Prime Minister José Sócrates is now determined to get the Portuguese economy back on track... This is urgently needed, because the Portuguese are gradually losing their self-confidence. And that's hardly surprising: in the latest ranking of EU countries according to per capita gross domestic product, Portugal was overtaken by two new EU members, the Czech Republic and Slovenia." (03/07/2007)

» To the complete press review of Tuesday, July 3, 2007

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