Tusk and Van Rompuy meet ahead of Poland's presidency

Polish Prime Minster and the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy on a visit to Warsaw met to discuss the priorities of Polish presidency in the EU, the EU summit in Brussels as well as the catastrophe in Japan and the situation in Northern Africa, "Newsweek" reports.

Van Rompuy pledged all necessary help in organizing the Eastern Partnership Summit next fall, during the Polish presidency. The leaders also talked about the meeting of the European Council planned for March 24 and 25 in Brussels. Van Rompuy underlined that the summit would be devoted to the issue of European market consolidation. "Undoubtedly issues connected with the unified European market will be particularly important during Poland's presidency. Numerous actions will be needed in the field of legislation" he emphasised. The 17 eurozone nations reached agreement on a pact to coordinate economic policy more centrally last Friday. The pact known as the pact for competitiveness is a result of motions filed by France and Germany at the previous EU summit in Brussels on February 4. The adopted version is open for non-eurozone countries. Polish PM Tusk has already declared earlier that Poland would join the pact, "Newsweek" notes. The issue of Poland's presidency in the EU has been widely debated for a while now. One of the most interesting views was presented at a seminar "EU Council Presidency – Past, Present and Future Prospects” held by the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) held a with participation of Petr Drulák (Director of the Institute of International Relations, Prague) and Leszek Jesień (European Union Programme Coordinator at PISM). What can be expected from Polish Presidency? Petr Drulák tried to answer this question by analyzing the past presidencies of two countries from Central-Eastern Europe - the Czech Republic and Slovenia. He presented the results of his research carried out together with Slovenian Zlatko Šabič. "We outlined a way to think about a presidency. We evaluated past presidencies according to two questions which seemed essential to us in evaluating presidency performance. The first question is: was the presidency effective - did it bring results? The second question - was the presidency biased or impartial? On the basis of two questions we distinguished four types of presidency. The first type is both effective and impartial, we called it the winner presidency. The past examples of Winner presidencies are the Finnish presidency of the late 1990s or the recent German presidency which managed to launch the Lisbon treaty process. The opposite is the Loser presidency - it has no results and people feel that the country was trying to promote its interest. Historical example could be the last Italian presidency, which was supposed to complete the constitution treaty but they did not manage to. There are two types in between - a presidency which is not really effective but it is impartial. That's usually the presidency of small countries, because they don’t have enough resources, but they do not have their big European interest either so they can be impartial. Most of small countries run the presidency which we call Hesitant. And then we have the effective but not impartial presidency. We call this Arrogant presidency - the textbook example is French presidency." One of the things the researchers also tried to explore was the link between the quality of EU membership and the presidency performance. This brought two other questions: to what extent the country does subscribe to or compete European norms and does the country have enough resources to implement EU regulations. This resulted in another typology. The countries who have both will and ability to comply with EU regulations are called Role Models - Germany is a good example. The opposite type is a country which does not like Europe much and does not have enough resources to implements EU regulations is a Trouble-maker. A country which does not compete the norms but does not have enough resources is the Foot-dragger and it is usually the case of new EU member states - Greece is a good example. The opposite is a country which has enough resources, but has second-thoughts and is called Euro-sceptic - like Denmark and UK. Is Poland a trouble-maker in the EU? Will it run a hesitant or arrogant presidency? Or maybe it will be a role model? "As useful as the experience of Czech Republic and Slovenia may be for Poland, we operate in different reality know - the post-Lisbon reality in which the role of the presidency itself is diminished" said Leszek Jesień. He believes the Lisbon Treaty had stripped the rotating presidency of the activity and influence which was the most visible - dealing with the externalities of European Union. Security policy was moved into the hands of the higher representative - Mrs Catherine Ashton and the permanent president of the European Council Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy. What has remained in the hands of the presidency is to run the other councils and to represent the Council in the intra-EU institutional game. "It is bound to work on behalf of the member states even more than it did in the past" Jesień underlines. "The pre-Lisbon presidencies were the EU presidency and the post-Lisbon are EU-Council presidencies, however this distinction has not been solved yet" he points out. But what are the real issues Poland is likely to have to deal during its Presidency? The experts believe it will be matters connected with EU enlargement - Romania and Bulgaria entering the Schengen zone, watching the southern border of the EU and tackling issues such as the accession of Western Balkans to the EU, emigration from North Africa, limiting carbon emissions, handling the economic problems of EU governments, implementation of fiscal consolidation, crisis management (but a lot of responsibility has been shifted to the External Action Service), natural disaster management, dealing with the aftermath of the "Arabic winter" and addressing the matters connected with the Eastern Partnership. 

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