Klima, Santer defend role of Commission

Despite contradictory signals from the Cardiff summit, European integration is not going into reverse - that, at least, was the message of Austria's Chancellor, Dr Viktor Klima, as he took on the mantle of the country's first EU presidency yesterday.

The Presidency opened on Wednesday with a music festival, but yesterday got down to work with the traditional meeting with the European Commission.

Emerging with the well-choreographed expressions of a mutual common purpose, Mr Klima and the President of the Commission, Mr Jacques Santer, both launched into sustained defences of the role of the Commission and European co-operation.

The subtext was a mutual unease at the tone of the pre-Cardiff KohlChirac letter and at the task that Austria was given at the summit of hosting a mini-summit in October on the "the future of the Union", largely to be dominated, ostensibly, by the issue of setting limits to community action.

Accepting the challenge as one appropriate to the beginning of the new era of the euro, Mr Klima warned, however, that leaders should take the opportunity "to stop passing the buck". They were only too well aware of the reality that legislation from the Commission emanated from member-tates.

Austrian sources suggest that little will come out of the informal summit on subsidiarity beyond a reaffirmation of the protocol agreed at Amsterdam.

Mr Klima set out the main priorities for the Austrian presidency: employment - preparing for the first vetting of members' employment strategies at the Vienna summit in December; Agenda 2000 - opening the real budget negotiations once the German elections in September are out of the way; enlargement - opening negotiations on accession with six member-tates; tax - continuing the discussions on harmonisation; EMU - final preparations for the launch of the single currency in January.