Britain's mission during its coming EU presidency will be to "give Europe back to the people", the British Foreign Secretary said in Dublin yesterday. Addressing a seminar on the UK presidency at the Institute of European Affairs, Mr Robin Cook said the EU seemed "to spend too much of its time discussing things that do not touch the people's lives - abstractions and institutions rather than a concrete agenda". The British presidency would attempt to redress the imbalance under the headings of jobs, crime and the environment.
On jobs, Mr Cook said his government was concentrating on providing new skills for the unemployed, because employability was "the only real job security" in the modern world.
"Of course, I am preaching to the converted here in Dublin, where unemployment has come down and migration has been reversed. The miracle has been pulled off through keeping the Irish economy competitive and ensuring Irish school-leavers emerge onto the jobs market armed with the skills that companies need."
Next to insecurity at work, he said, the greatest concern to people in Europe was insecurity at home and on the street because of crime. He cited the drugs trade, which he said was second only to the oil trade in turnover, and had been directly related to 6,500 deaths in Europe in 1995.
"The drugs trade is one of the most integrated in Europe. Its agents are streets ahead of government in working together across borders. If we are to catch them, we need to match them, with teamwork and international cooperation of our own."
He paid tribute to the late Veronica Geurin, saying: "The best tribute we can pay her is to show the same courage and determination in taking on the drugs barons." And he said the British presidency would be used to enhance police co-operation across borders.
On the subject of EMU, Mr Cook said Britain was "alive" to Ireland's anxieties about the impact of monetary union on economic relations with a UK still outside the single currency. He said Britain will be working to meet the economic tests that would put it in a position to join early in the life of the next parliament, and was committed to helping monetary union to be a success.
He said: "Even though we will not be taking part in the first wave in 1999, it is still in our interests that it should succeed. We will use our presidency to ensure that those countries who wish to form a single currency can get off to the best possible start."
The British presidency would also seek to make progress on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, changes made more urgent by the challenge of enlargement, Mr Cook continued. "I know the strength of feeling on reform of the CAP, and the divergence of views about how it is best done. But there is much that we can agree on. A modernised agricultural policy must support our farmers, but at lower cost to the consumer, and preserving rural communities and the rural environment."
The Foreign Secretary later met the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, briefing him on plans for the British presidency as well as discussing a range of issues from Northern Ireland to human right abuses in Algeria and East Timor.
Mr Cook said he welcomed the Government's support for two British initiatives on human rights; a European code of conduct on the sale of arms, and the visit during the British presidency of a troika of EU ambassadors to East Timor.
