EU Review & Call to Prayer (EURCP) – The New EU

(By Praise & Prayer Ministries International http://www.EUPrayer.com)

The Word

1 Timothy 2: 1,2 "Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence." [Your prayers implement God’s Word]

John 15: 5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who ABIDES in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. 7. If you ABIDE in Me, and My Words ABIDE in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you”

2Chronicles 7:14 “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

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6 July 2004, EUReview & Call to Prayer Ministries – Hugh E. and Norma Jenson Davis

Other language EU News http://www.euractiv.com/ [fr][de]

NEWS

1. The European Commission presidency, A Lisbon agenda, [ECONOMIST]

2. IGCAWAR NEWSLETTER [with new EU constitution and commentary] 3 July 2004

3. Ireland shines during EU presidency. [AP, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER]

4. Three-nation alliance trampled by 'rogue elephant' Chirac, [News Independent]

5. The European Union summit, A difficult birth5. The Brussels Agreement on the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for

6. Europe: A "user-friendly" analysis [Bruges}

7. Analysis: The EU Constitutional Treaty: The Final Deal [EurActiv}

8. Analysis: Counting the Constitutional Blessings [EurActiv]

1, The European Commission presidency A Lisbon agenda

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2877153

Jul 1st 2004 | BRUSSELS AND LISBON

José Manuel Durão Barroso, the next European Commission boss, will have to fight hard for a liberal economic agenda in Brussels

UNTIL last week, few people outside Portugal had heard of the country's prime minister, José Manuel Durão Barroso. But the man chosen to be the next European Commission president has been immersed since his teens in politics. In the 1970s he was a Maoist activist, daubing caricatures of capitalists on walls and preaching the dictatorship of the proletariat. As he explained in Brussels this week, at Lisbon University during the Portuguese revolution there were only two political parties: pro-Soviet Communists and pro-Chinese Communists. The Maoists were the more forward-looking.

Today Mr Barroso is the very model of a modern prime minister. As a centre-right leader he has been unpopular with the proletariat for his budget cuts and privatisations. He is well-placed to thrive in Brussels. He speaks English, French and Spanish fluently. He is only 48, yet has a wealth of international experience, including negotiating a peace deal in Angola.

Mr Barroso sees his new role as that of honest broker and “point of equilibrium” between conflicting groups. He does not want to build up the prestige of the commission against national governments. That is a change from some ambitious predecessors, who saw the commission as a European government in embryo. Yet, as Mr Barroso notes, the role of honest broker will be trickier in an enlarged European Union. “The risks of polarisation will be much greater with 25 member states,” he says. “We have to avoid any fragmentation between founding states and newcomers, between the centre and the periphery or between the rich and the poor. The key issue is fairness.”

It is inevitable, he adds, that different countries will move towards further integration at different speeds. But this should not lead to some being treated as second-class members. “There can be no directorate of countries saying these are the member states that can move forward, while the others are left in the waiting-room,” he declares. Such words will be a relief to the smaller countries which fear that France, Germany and Britain have precisely such a directorate in mind.

Mr Barroso faces an early test of his ability to stand up to France and Germany. In return for backing him, the French and Germans have made clear that they expect big economic portfolios in the next commission. The Germans want the job of a new “super-commissioner” for the economy; the French have their eye on the competition post. Big EU countries, which have just lost their second commissioners, naturally want top jobs in Brussels. This week France won the reappointment of Pierre de Boissieu as boss of the Council secretariat, and Spain the renomination of Javier Solana as foreign-policy supremo.

But the worry in the commission is that the French and Germans want these jobs to promote illiberal economic ideas. Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, has talked of the need to protect manufacturing industry. The French see Mario Monti, the current competition commissioner, as an ultra-liberal: he has crossed swords with Paris several times. Liberals are alarmed. Frits Bolkestein, the single-market commissioner (a post that Britain covets), has said that Franco-German calls for a return of industrial policy made him feel he was living in a 1970s time-warp.

Mr Barroso's sympathies are with the liberals, as his record shows. But there are suspicions that he may already have given undertakings to France and Germany to secure their support. In a press conference this week, Mr Barroso insisted that no decisions had been taken and emphasised his right to deploy his team as he sees fit. But no new commission president will relish starting in a showdown with France and Germany. Managing this tension will be Mr Barroso's first and most crucial task.

The potential for tension between Mr Barroso and the Franco-German pair is heightened by his support for the Iraq war. It was as foreign minister in the 1990s that Mr Barroso staked out his position as an Atlanticist, arguing that Portugal was bound by geography and history to maintain strong links with Britain and the United States. He hosted a pre-war summit with America's George Bush, Britain's Tony Blair and Spain's José María Aznar in the Azores. Indeed some thought the Azores summit would make him unacceptable to France and Germany.

The French were swayed by his fluency in their language. And Portugal has sent only 120 policemen to serve in Iraq. Even so, the British are surprised that France did not veto Mr Barroso. One senior British politician unwisely proclaimed the decline of French influence in the EU—ensuring that the new president will be keen to show his independence not just of France and Germany, but of Britain too.

PRAY President Barroso will learn the importance of seeking God’s will and of doing it continually. Also that he has a staff member that knows God and will encourage him.

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2. IGCAWAR NEWSLETTER 3 July 2004

NEW Pro visional Consolidated Version of the Draft Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (Agreed 2004)

The New EU Constitutional Treaty - What Does It Entail?

The New EU Constitutional Treaty http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/misc/81243.pdf

With the agreement on the new European Constitutional Treaty now behind

us it is time to explain what changes are in prospect as a result. IGCAWAR's Guide to the Draft Treaty

Evaluation [Link] http://www.europaworld.org/IGCAWAR/22/theneweuconstitutionaltreaty.htm

PRAY that the referendum voters and the governments know the facts and act accordingly.

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3. Ireland shines during EU presidency

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer/ap.asp?category=1103&slug=Ireland%20EU%20Success

Thursday, July 1, 2004 · Last updated 2:27 a.m. PT

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

[See web page for full article]

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4. Three-nation alliance trampled by 'rogue elephant' Chirac

By Stephen Castle in The Hague and Andrew Grice

01 July 2004

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=537001

Britain has concluded that its three-nation alliance with France and Germany is in effect over after a series of rows between Tony Blair and the French President, Jacques Chirac.

Ministers believe President Chirac has become impossible to work with, and one government source described him as a "rogue elephant". The strategy of "trilateralism" has now given way to limited ad hoc co-operation on specific issues.

Asked if the three-way approach was dead, one Blair aide replied, "yes". The Prime Minister's change of tack emerged as he accused France and Germany of watering down moves to ensure stability in Iraq and Afghanistan and warned that this week's Nato summit had not faced up to the threat of global terrorism.

The triple alliance, designed to set the European Union's agenda after it expanded to 25 members in May, came under acute strain during a power struggle over the appointment of the European Commission president. Britain helped to block the Franco-German candidate, Belgium's premier, Guy Verhofstadt, and then to orchestrate the appointment of the Portuguese Prime Minister, Jose Manuel Barroso, a supporter of the US-led war in Iraq.

At the Nato summit in Istanbul, M. Chirac watered down plans to increase Nato's presence in Iraq, criticised President George Bush over his support for Turkish membership of the EU, and objected to plans to deploy a Nato rapid reaction force to Afghanistan. The UK believes M. Chirac is lashing out from a position of weakness and is playing to a domestic audience.

The Government sees the appointment of Mr Barroso as an important turning point because it proved the French and Germans could not push through their choice of Commission president. The end of trilateralism will come as a relief to many smaller European nations, which feared the three most powerful countries in the EU would set up a directoire.

[See web page link above for full article]

PRAY that President Chirac’s attitude will change and become balanced. If this does not happen pray that his influence be reduced over the affairs of Europe in some way so that it will not hurt the best interest of all of Europe but serve the best interest of its people.

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5. The European Union summit, A difficult birth

http://www.economist.com/World/europe/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2792646

Jun 24th 2004 | BRUSSELS

From The Economist print edition

European leaders have, at the last gasp, drawn up a new European Union constitution—but will it ever come into force?

HOW, six months after the Brussels breakdown, did European leaders resolve their differences on the new EU constitution? By three means: arm-twisting, obfuscation and opt-outs.

Arm-twisting worked on the main issue that caused the failure in December: the weighting of votes. Under heavy pressure, Poland and Spain accepted a new “double majority” voting system that dilutes their power. But a degree of obfuscation smoothes the change. The original plan was that a law would pass if it had the support of half the 25 EU countries, representing 60% of the population. The new deal raises the voting thresholds to 55% of countries, representing 65% of the population, with an added provision that a blocking minority must come from four or more countries. This makes it easier for Poland and Spain to block laws they do not like, but stops the big three doing it alone.

Britain's insistence on retaining a veto in many areas was the other big obstacle. Tony Blair won a clear-cut victory on tax. Provisions to harmonise corporate taxes by majority vote were struck out, a relief to countries such as Slovakia that rely on low taxes. Obfuscation dealt with foreign policy. The draft said that, if the new EU foreign minister made a proposal, the Union could decide whether to adopt it by majority vote. Now the foreign minister can make a proposal only if EU governments unanimously ask for it. Connoisseurs of baffling diplomatic compromises are referred to Article III-201(2), sub-section (b).

Mr Blair's other red lines were dealt with by “opt-outs”. Under the constitution the EU gets the right to harmonise aspects of criminal law by majority vote. But a new provision states that, if a country feels a European law threatens “fundamental aspects of its criminal justice system”, it may apply an emergency brake. Initially this delays the law's passage. If a new version cannot be agreed, objectors can opt out, allowing a smaller group of countries to press ahead. This tolerance of deeper integration by a small group was a sop to federalists. An even stronger emergency brake will apply to social security.

The biggest innovation is the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which protects everything from the “right to life” to the right to strike. Two years ago, the British were reluctant to accept that the charter should be in the constitution, because it was alien to British legal traditions and might be used to overturn Thatcher-era labour-market reforms. But long before the latest summit, Britain had accepted its incorporation, with the full force of law. Instead, Mr Blair took comfort in a statement stressing that it would apply “to the member states only when they are implementing EU law”, as well as a reference to the need to interpret rights in accordance with national traditions and practices. [See web page link for full article]

Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

PRAY that a strong Christian leader emerge from European leadership that becomes a strong influence for hearing and knowing the will of God for Europe.

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6. The Brussels Agreement on the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe: A "user-friendly" analysis [by Dr Richard North]

http://www.brugesgroup.com/mediacentre/comment.live?article=220

Introduction

"A difficult, dry technocratic document". That was the description from Tim Franks, the BBC's Brussels correspondent. No one would disagree with him. The issues dealt with in the Brussels summit certainly confirm that assessment, underlining the mind-numbing, technocratic nature of the enterprise. Here are the heads:

-The European Commission

-Definition of qualified majority voting

-Draft Decision relating to implementation of Article I-24

-European Parliament seats

-Provisions specific to Member States whose currency is the euro

-Coordination of Economic Policy

-Declaration on the Stability and Growth Pact

-Measures relating to excessive deficits

-Multiannual Financial Framework

-Explanations relating to the Charter of Fundamental Rights

-Provisions specific to Member States whose currency is the euro

-Eurojust

-Enhanced Cooperation

-Economic, Social and Territorial Cohesion, including transport

-Energy

-Authentic texts and translations

[See Web page in link above]

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7. Analysis: The EU Constitutional Treaty: The Final Deal [FR] [DE]
Centre for European Reform
http://www.euractiv.com/cgi-bin/cgint.exe/1?204&OIDN=251356&-tt=

In short:

This briefing note by the Centre for European Reform provides a summary of the key decisions taken at the June European Council in the framework of the IGC.

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8. Analysis: Counting the Constitutional Blessings [FR] [DE]
Centre for European Policy Studies

http://www.euractiv.com/cgi-bin/cgint.exe/1?204&OIDN=251355&-tt=

In short:

This CEPS analysis looks at the main achievements of the Constitutional Treaty and the challenges that may lie ahead in the upcoming ratification process.

PRAY that [for items 5-7] the politically informed and influential of Europe will understand these issues and will be led by God in the use of their influence.

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PPmi (Praise & Prayer Ministries International - Hugh & Norma Jenson Davis) is conducting this multi-denominational ministry under the mission program of the Assemblies of God Western Europe office outside of Brussels, Belgium. The mailing address there is: EMC/EURCP (Gerald Branum.) 45 Chaussee de Waterloo, 1640 Rhode Saint Genese, BELGIUM

This newsletter is also available free by subscription. Please contact us if you would like to receive a monthly copy.

Our email is: ptlhed@aol.com eurcp@EUPrayer.com or NjensonDavis3@aol.com

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