Spain treads warily to make success of rules

Quote

Tony Barber

Financial Times, 04.01.2010

When Spain took over the European Union's six-month presidency from Sweden on January 1 it inherited much more than the usual catalogue of economic and foreign policy challenges.

For Spain is the first country to hold the reins under the EU's Lisbon treaty, a set of institutional reforms designed to strengthen decision-making procedures and, in certain respects, to downgrade the role of the rotating -presidency. [...]

"National governments are not ready to give up the opportunity to demonstrate to their own public and to the outside world that they are [co-] leading the EU - even if this opportunity only arises once every 14 or more years in a EU of 27-plus members," Antonio Missiroli and Janis Emmanouilidis of the European Policy Centre think-tank wrote last month. […]

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