Alternate Foreign Minister for European Affairs, Nikos Xydakis, began the address he delivered before the General Affairs Council (GAC) of the EU today in Brussels with the following statement: ‘After the outcome of Bratislava, which is a compromise, we are now faced with a landmark. It is the Summit of Rome in March which will mark 60 years since the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the European unification plan, in March. Therefore, we are obliged to proceed with stocktaking and start working out a plan. The items the Presidency has included on the agenda provide a major opportunity to ascertain the fact that implementation mechanisms are not efficient to the extent they are becoming unattractive for EU citizens. We are failing to convince our citizens’.
‘Managing the refugee issue has been asuch indication, the Alternate Minister added. ‘It has been a crash test in recent years: in 2014, when Italy was facing it alone, in 2015 when Greece was facing it alone, and back in 2004 and 2005 Spain was facing it alone. None of these great historical global issues currently being discussed in New York City, both in the UNGA and the Summit President Obama is organizing, can possibly be solved by one single EU member-state alone.’
Alternate Minister Xydakis agreed with statements made by his counterparts from Sweden, Portugal, Germany and Italy made about the extent to which member-states commit to implementing joint decisions. ‘There is very little degree of commitment in implementing joint European Council decisions, the ones that all 28 partners are in agreement with and then some avoid enforcing by invoking various reasons or just being inert. Flexible solidarity’, a notion that has been heard time and again in recent weeks, is a sort of a silent revision of the Union’s founding treaties. Let us think it through seriously. Let us have a discussion indeed, but we cannot dispute the EU’s founding core. Solidarity, proportionality, burden-sharing, they are all stipulated and agreed upon as of the moment we join the Union. We cannot possibly keep revisiting such issues constantly to create an impression at home’.
The Alternate Minister actually listed those directions that the EU ought to be opting for in managing the refugee/migrant issue:
‘What the EU needs, in the face of this great historic challenge of population movements in the form of either refugee flows due to wars or migration flows, is a cohesive European long-term plan. A plan encompassing:
• border control and management, for which excellent work has been done over the previous year with the European Border and Coast Guard.
• a common European asylum system, that many European leaders have recommended, i.e. a system based on a new, fair and sustainable Dublin regulation.
• a European return system to join forces and exercise persuasion together so that returns may happen in a lawful, effective and speedy manner.
• a joint integration framework, including exchange of experiences with regard to those who are selected to stay. There is huge background and experience on this particular matter, especially in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark, which should be communicated to and shared with those countries that are lacking it.
• In addition, there should be persistence and consistency in adhering to those decisions that have already been made, e.g. what we decided in Valetta with regard to African nations, that we are going to support the countries of origin and transit countries of migrants and refugees in a decisive manner’.
On a final note, in his main address, Alternate Minister Xydakis pointed out how critical these times are and insisted that Europe is in front of a historic responsibility and opportunity. ‘Let us start delivering and implementing what we have agreed upon. There are 500 million EU citizens who are watching what we co-decide and then fail to enforce. As a result thereof, there are dissolution tendencies and EU values as well as the values of our democracies are being blatantly slandered. Ahead of the great symbolical landmark that is the 60-year anniversary of the Signing of the Treaty of Rome, we must focus on and commit ourselves to these thoughts’.
In the interventions he subsequently made, the Alternate Minister for European Affairs touched on:
• the strategy to fight youth and long-term unemployment, by underscoring that ‘joblessness is not just another figure, it is the most important social indicator’
• strengthening the social pillar and the world of work by quoting Jean-Claude Juncker on the need for a social Europe, and
• interconnecting European information networks for optimum interoperability.
The General Affairs Council agenda highlights include preparation for the European Council in Brussels, in October, the level of implementation of June European Council conclusions, a presentation of the mid-term review of the Multiannual Financial Framework for 2014-2020 as well as legislative planning. The GAC consists of European Affairs Ministers from all member-states and, among others, coordinates and moderates preparatory work ahead of Summits, starting with the one scheduled for October 20, 2016.
September 21, 2016