ALTHOUGH SPAIN officially took over the six-monthly presidency of the European Union on January 1st, the formal ceremonies were held yesterday.
The blue-and-gold European flag was raised alongside those of the 27 member nations outside the offices of the EU in Madrid, a building it shares with the Irish Embassy.
Spain is assuming the presidency at a particularly difficult time. The effects of the international financial crisis have hit particularly hard in a country where so much of the economy depended on real estate, development and construction.
Today shells of hundreds of buildings are lie half-completed around the country, and more than four million people are jobless. The unemployment rate stands at almost 18 per cent, the highest in Europe, and the country remains in technical recession.
This is the first presidency since the appointment of the permanent EU president, Herman van Rompuy of Belgium, and the new high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, who replaced Javier Solana, who held the post for the past decade.
Prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero held meetings yesterday with Mr van Rompuy and EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso. They discussed the division of powers with the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, which came into effect on December 1st.
Mr Barroso said that economic recovery and job creation were the primary objectives of the next few months. “Only by working together side by side can we overcome these problems,” he said. “To do so we must achieve a strong industrial base.”
He regretted the failure to reach agreement on climate change at the Copenhagen meeting and said the process must continue under the Spanish presidency.
Mr van Rompuy echoed these sentiments. “The next six months will be a great challenge for all of us and we must work together in the spirit of the treaty,” he said.
“Our two main challenges are the economic crisis and ways to combat climate change.”
He said he would convene an extraordinary summit meeting of heads of state and government, to be held next month, when these issues would top the agenda.
Mr Zapatero stressed that the 27 members must work together to put Europe on an equal footing with the US and China.
“We will work for an economic recovery, a recovery from the crisis to make Europe more productive, more innovative and more sustainable,” he said.
They have announced a long list of ministerial, bilateral and multi-national summits, starting next week with the first informal summit of the presidency, to be held in Segovia for the 27 ministers for Europe.
It will be attended by former Spanish prime minister Felipe González, recently named president of the Reflection Group for the Future of Europe, to discuss the 2020 strategy.
The problem of terrorism and international steps to combat it continues to trouble the world, particularly in the wake of the foiled Detroit bomb attack on Christmas Day.
On Wednesday, Janet Napolitano, the US secretary of state for national security, said she would go to Madrid next month to discuss with the EU what steps could be taken at airports and on international flights. Mr Zapatero is optimistic that a successful rotating presidency will boost his popularity and that of his socialist government, which has lost support in recent months.
Recent opinion polls show they would lose if elections were held tomorrow.