2023-12-22 19:27:00
1. Two months (and months) to complete as many legislative files as possible
The European legislature is coming to an end. Between June 6 and 9, citizens of all Member States will vote to renew the composition of the European Parliament. MEPs close their work in April. Therefore, the time remaining for Parliament and the Council to reach compromises for the adoption of legislative texts which remain in the pipeline is limited. Very limited. Most of the agreements must be completed at the political level by the end of February, at the latest in March for some important files. They must in fact be able to be analyzed by legal services, then translated into all the languages of the Union before their formal adoption.
Belgium will focus its European presidency on three objectives: protect, strengthen, prepare for the future
According to Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, some 150 files likely to be adopted are on the table – compared to 100 at the same time in 2019. Belgium can be relieved that an agreement was recently reached on the Pact on migration and asylum, a poisoned political issue if ever there was one. However, there are still quite a few important texts under construction.
Among these is the “Net zero industry act” which aims to accelerate the development of “clean” technologies in the EU. A Belgian hobbyist, Alexander De Croo constantly emphasizes the need to reconcile the climatic and environmental ambitions of the Green Deal with the industrial component. We must agree with the European Parliament on the reform of European budgetary rules, on which the Twenty-seven have just reached an agreement. But also: the fight against organized crime and the negotiation of the revision of the 2021-2027 budgetary framework and that of the 2024 budget, etc., etc. We will also have to try to unblock the legislation to combat violence committed against women, stuck in the Council, as well as get the agreement on platform workers, which France has decided to denounce, back on track.
How the EU works ©IPM Graphics
Belgium’s reputation as a compromise broker may well be well established at the European level, but the task promises to be complicated. “We will have to be efficient from the start,” prefaces a Belgian diplomatic source. The Belgians did not wait for the start of their presidency to get their hands dirty. “Thanks to the good cooperation with the Spanish presidency, they were already in the room for several trilogues (Parliament-Council-Commission, Editor’s note),” slips an insider.
In the European Parliament, it is estimated that if the winds are favorable, 80 texts could be put together. At the Council, we calculate that “60 would already be good”. “Going as far as possible in the legislative agenda will be one of the criteria by which we will judge the success of the Belgian presidency”, recognizes Willem van de Voorde, the permanent representative of Belgium to the EU
2. Weigh on the debate on the future and reform of the European Union
From March, the Belgian presidency will focus on the medium and long term. The heads of state and government of the Twenty-seven will enter directly into the development of the Strategic Agenda – that is to say the political priorities of the European Union for the next five years. They should also launch reflection on the future of the Union, made all the more necessary and pressing as the enlargement process has been relaunched. Even if it only comes to fruition in a decade or more, the time has come to think about how to reform the Union, to adapt its functioning and its budget.
The enlargement of the European Union, a major challenge
Times, and Europe, have changed. Belgium will no longer repeat the Laeken summit which, at the end of the 2001 presidency, gave new impetus towards greater European integration. Prime Minister Verhofstadt had then been a driving force, in the oven and in the mill.
From now on, it is the permanent president of the European Council, Charles Michel, who will be in charge. However, we are curious to see how, taking advantage of the fact that it has the presidency of the Council, Belgium will profile itself on this subject, which it takes very seriously: the proper functioning of the European Union is considered by the Kingdom as a “vital” necessity. “Beyond the legislative agreements, I think we will have succeeded in our presidency if we manage to get important messages across. Sometimes, success is having a line in a strategic agenda on a point that you consider crucial,” underlines a Belgian source.
3. Don’t get distracted by European, federal and regional elections
Additional difficulty: the European electoral campaign in all member states, which can, in the worst case, lead to positions being frozen. It will be coupled, at the Belgian level, with the federal and regional election campaign which will take place concurrently.
Should we fear a risk of dispersion of Belgian policies? Or that pre-electoral nervousness clouds the judgment of the multitude of parties in power in the federal and federated entities, and threatens the cohesion of the Belgian presidency? “The strategic interest of all Belgian parties is to have a strong Union, an internal market, a functioning Schengen zone”, and therefore, to work in this direction, defuses a Belgian source. “The context is a little anxiety-provoking, there is a desire to remind, thanks to this presidency, that the EU has added value,” adds a source from a ministerial office.
“The elections are a great challenge because it forces us, as the Belgian presidency, to show that we are listening and that this machine is not only technocratic, but also at the service of the population ”, believes for his part the deputy permanent representative of Belgium to the EU, Pierre Cartuyvels.
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