THE EUROPEAN Commission president has promised major reforms of the way the Commission operates to increase public confidence in the EU.
Outlining the Commission's programme of work for next year to the European Parliament yesterday, Mr Jacques Santer said: "The citizens of all our countries are showing less and less confidence in politicians and in the structures of our law-based constitutional systems. This is an observation which applies to the Union itself."
To reverse this trend, the EU's institutions needed a radical overhaul to make them more democratic, he said. The Commission for its part would work at reforming what does not work and concentrating on the real priorities.
In the spirit of making the EU more accessible and comprehensible to the average EU citizen, Mr Santer's address was simpler and more straightforward than the lengthy and complex programmes of work announced in the past by Commission presidents.
He identified four priorities for the Commission's work in 1997 to promote economic growth and employment and to prepare for the single currency to promote "the European social model to increase the profile of the EU in international affairs; to prepare for the future.
Of these, he said, the development of a European "confidence pact" to promote employment was his priority. This confidence pact has been a project of Mr Santer for over two years. It involves the co-ordination of all existing EU pro-employment measures as well as the development of new ones.
It has been criticised by some as being long on aspirations but short on specifics, but Mr Santer expressed determination yesterday to continue with the project.
am not prepared to abandon a scheme which in my view is the essential precondition for meeting the challenges of the year 2000." The leader of the Fianna Fail group, Mr Gerard Collins, believed the European Commission would have to give more attention to educating people about the potential advantages of the single currency.
"It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to create a single currency without the support of the citizens of the participating countries," he said. "The opponents of monetary union have already come to this conclusion and are actively engaged in bringing their case to the electorates in many of our member-states.
"It is time for European institutions to be equally vociferous in bringing the arguments in favour of a single currency to Europe's electorate." Such arguments included the prospect of lower interest and mortgage rates, the end of currency fluctuations and reduced trade and travel costs.