[A-List] EU integration struggles

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

This is important, given the recent push by the European Round Table and
assorted Euro-monopoly capital lobbies for greater centralisation of
power within the European Commission and away from the panoply of
national states.


EU to review the opening of public services
By Francesco Guerrera and Daniel Dombey in Brussels
Financial Times: August 9 2002

The European Union's progress towards a single market could be stifled by a
decision by the European Commission to re-examine public services
regulations, after intense pressure from France.

The powerful competition and internal market departments of the Commission
fear the decision of Romano Prodi, the Commission's president, to start work
on a consultation paper on public services could choke off the
liberalisation of large parts of the European economy.

France, the EU country most concerned about opening up former state
monopolies, has warned that full liberalisation of the electricity and
postal markets could endanger essential services.

Some EU officials fear France's stance could insulate large parts of the
economy from normal competition and internal market rules.

"Any move to exempt large parts of Europe's service sector from normal
competition and internal market rules would make a mockery of our efforts to
build a single market," a senior Commission official said.

Paris signed up to limited energy liberalisation measures in March only
after winning an agreement that the Commission would prepare a report this
year on whether new legislation should protect essential services.

But Mr Prodi's move goes much further, since the consultation paper,
expected to be published in the autumn, is a first step towards new
legislation and could shake up Commission policy in the entire sector.

Diplomats from the UK and Germany have voiced concerns that such legislation
could stall liberalisation and compromise the EU's ambition of becoming the
world's most competitive economy by 2010.

The dispute over public services comes as the Commission's role in
competition and internal market policy is coming under increasing scrutiny.

People close to Mr Prodi see the consultation paper as part of a
comprehensive rethink of EU economic policy. It comes on top of Mr Prodi's
creation last month of a new group to reassess the single market and the way
monetary union operates.

France welcomed Mr Prodi's initiative, a French official saying: "This is
one of the subjects that is as important for the right as for the left.

"There was an era when there was a very strong liberal current in the EU but
following things like [the failed privatisation of] the trains in the UK,
there has been a bit of a retrenchment."

Jacques Chirac, French president, has argued that market opening should not
be allowed to interfere with the provision of essential services.

But France has been attacked by other EU member states angry that
state-controlled Electricité de France made acquisitions in their countries
while the French market remained largely closed.

Many EU governments argue that all recent liberalisation measures contain
steps to safeguard essential services to ordinary consumers.

Nevertheless France's centre-right government, which emphasises its
privatisation plans more than liberalisation, has not changed its position
substantially from its leftwing predecessor.