Amsterdam EU treaty provisions which allow groups of member-states to integrate some of their policies faster than the Union as a whole should be made more easy to operate, the French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, said yesterday.
Mr Jospin's call, in a Paris speech outlining the priorities of the forthcoming "ambitious" French Presidency, reinforces growing pressures to include the reform of "flexibility" clauses in the discussions of the Inter-Governmental Conference. Enhanced flexibility is seen by some as the key to avoiding stagnation as the EU enlarges, but by others, including Ireland, as threatening to divide the union.
Mr Jospin used the 50th anniversary of the Schuman declaration to remind his audience of its achievements. "Europe is free. Europe is at peace. Europe is united. It has become a model of integration without equal in the world," he said.
He spoke of completing the employment challenges set at Lisbon but of complementing them with an ambitious social agenda based on a high degree of social protection at work and a struggle against social exclusion and all forms of discrimination.
Another priority would be the strengthening of the economic co-ordination role of the Euro-11. France, he said, would work on "those aspects of tax harmonisation necessary to the proper functioning of the single market".
On institutional reform, he said the process of deeper integration would require making the flexibility provisions more flexible.
"That is how, I am certain, we can pursue, without becoming trapped in the eternal debate between federal and confederal models, a pragmatic course of development which has always been a feature of the Union . . ."
He strongly supported enlargement but said it had to be carefully managed.
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