Summit to focus on energy and innovation
Security of supply to to pagenda of EU leaders, while risk recedes of debt crisis hijacking agenda.
The European Union’s national leaders will pledge when they meet for a one-day summit in Brussels next week (4 February) to leave no corner of the bloc without secure energy supplies.
The national leaders will also promise greater efforts to support scientists and innovative companies.
Such promises will meet the ambition of Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, for the summit to concentrate on the EU’s long-standing strategic weaknesses, but the agenda could yet be hijacked by the eurozone’s debt crisis.
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Officially, the meeting is devoted to energy and innovation. The national leaders will highlight the urgency of upgrading Europe’s antiquated pipelines, transmission lines and energy storage facilities, and pledge to build new cross-border connections.
“No EU member state should remain an energy island after 2015 or see its energy security jeopardised by lack of the appropriate connections,” states a draft of the leaders’ communiqué seen by European Voice. The leaders will ask the European Commission to report by June on the level of public investment required. Although no figures are in the draft conclusions, a Commission study last year put the total public and private cost of new energy infrastructure at €1 trillion by 2020.
Cross-border investment
Folker Franz of BusinessEurope, the employers’ federation, has called on governments to face up to the urgency and the unprecedented size of investment needed.
He said: “What we need is a clear commitment from the heads of state and government that future financial frameworks of the European Union should create instruments that will facilitate long-term investment projects, especially cross-border.”
Fact File
COUNCIL CONCLUSIONS
Implement new rules on internal energy market by March
Commission to propose figures on energy finance in June
More effort to meet energy-efficiency target of 20% improvement by 2020, but no binding target
Complete European Research Area, to make it easier for researchers to cross borders, by 2014
European Commission to propose measures to stimulate a venture-capital market
The Commission is also keen to get political buy-in for business-friendly innovation policy, targeted at big social and environmental challenges, such as climate change, food security and ageing populations.
The leaders are expected to endorse ideas aimed at making it easier for researchers to work in other EU countries, by completing the ‘European Research Area’ by 2014. Another promise is to spend more of the public procurement budget on buying innovative products and services.
The eurozone debt crisis is not on the agenda, but will be discussed over lunch. The potential for a serious fall-out between the Commission and Germany receded this week, after the Commission rowed back on demands for a quick agreement on changes to the eurozone bail-out fund.
Last week, José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, called for a a decision in February to expand the €440 billion European Financial Stability Facility. But yesterday, Barroso’s spokeswoman described the February council as simply “a step in preparing the ground for such a comprehensive response [to the debt crisis]”.