France takes over the six month presidency of the European Union at a particularly busy time and with a great deal to accomplish between now and December. French ministers stress three major tasks facing them: creating a more effective and stronger EU; modernising the European economy and social model; and making its work more useful to European citizens. Following last night's French victory in the Euro 2000 final they certainly have the wind in their sails. Much the highest priority facing the French team is to conclude the Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) successfully and on time for Nice next December. As the French foreign minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, writes in this newspaper today, "the challenge is to enable the EU, already experiencing some difficulty in moving forward, to function effectively, i.e. to take decisions and prepare its institutions for enlargement". That will coincide with a further round of negotiations with the accession states.
It will be regarded as a signal failure if the IGC does not finish at Nice. This means the French stress the realism just as much as the ambition with which they will tackle the task. It will be tricky indeed to resolve the four main issues involved: extending the scope of qualified majority voting; reweighting the votes in the Council of Ministers; deciding how the member-states should be represented in the EU institutions, notably the European Commission; and deciding whether to relax the rules about flexible integration allowing some states to proceed faster or further than others are willing or able to go.
This is a much more important set of issues than appears at first sight. It goes to the heart of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the EU as it faces the challenge of continental enlargement. As many of the recent speeches by French, German and British leaders make clear, the limited but crucial issues in this IGC lead on to a much broader political and constitutional debate on how the EU should be reorganised. The French are keen not to raise expectations too high or to confuse shorter and more long term objectives. They have also to cope with some tension between the European objectives of the Gaullist President Chirac and the government presided over by the Socialist prime minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, as elections loom in 2002. But their common interests in a successful presidency should ensure that tension is carefully managed.
Mr Jospin is determined to ensure a strong model of social cohesion is added to the programme of economic innovation and modernisation agreed at the Lisbon summit last March. The French also want to strengthen the political role of the Euro 12 group. They want to bring forward the work on setting up an EU food safety regime, tapping into an issue of great sensitivity in France. Immigration, asylum procedures and drug trafficking are other notable priorities.
The French will chair an important pledging conference in November at which member-states will commit troops and resources to the EU's rapid reaction force. At a summit in Biarritz in October EU leaders will consider whether the Charter of Fundamental Rights being drawn up by a representative group parallel to the IGC should become a political or a binding legal declaration. It is a difficult agenda for a few short months.