MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mr. Bean, the Spanish EU presidency and the next six months

The hapless British comedian

Spanish diplomacy, authorities and the press have repeatedly insisted, with a certain degree of optimism, that with Madrid holding the six-month presidency of the EU, Latinamerica will be a priority.

Any of the three trade and cooperation deals stalled (for years) but latent, with Mercosur, the Andean Community and Central America could fructify in the next six months or advance to a consensus take-off position.

However the European press does not share that optimism given the challenges faced by EU and the stubborn statistics plus the fact that Spain will have to instrument the complexities of a new creation, the Lisbon treaty.

The Financial Times gives a clear picture of prospects and the scarce-time agenda for the presidency of a country that has lost the allure of the past and belongs to the EU most-sick economies club:

“By any standards, it was an unfortunate beginning. Spain’s six-month presidency of the European Union, which got underway this week (January first), appears to have been subject to an attack by computer-hackers. On its first day, web-surfers navigating to the special presidency website found themselves staring at photos of Mr Bean, the hapless British comedy character who (some claim), bears a resemblance to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister.

Mr Bean is famous for his stumbles and mishaps – and Spain is also looking accident-prone at the moment. On the previous occasions that Spain has assumed the presidency of the EU, the country’s mood was very different. Both the González and Aznar governments were presiding over a booming economy that infused the whole nation with a certain swagger. But Spain has been hit very hard by the global recession. Unemployment is close to 20 per cent and the all-important construction sector is on its back.

Perhaps Mr Zapatero is being distracted by his domestic travails, because the work program that he has proposed for the Spanish presidency is remarkably anodyne, even by the undemanding standards of most European Union presidencies. The now un-hacked website claims that the EU’s new Lisbon treaty will be the “focus of the Spanish presidency”. Since the treaty has just come into force – and puts into place a complex structure that combines the rotating presidency Spain has just assumed with a new permanent presidency – it is understandable that the Spanish see getting this new system to work as a priority.

All the same, if the Spanish presidency genuinely does concentrate on making the Lisbon treaty work, it would be making a mistake that is all too typical of the European Union: concentrating on the fine-tuning of institutional arrangements, at the expense of dealing with real-world problems that trouble European citizens.

Of these problems, by far and away the most important is the economic crisis. Growth is still feeble across Europe – and Spain is no exception. During the Spanish presidency, European governments will have to try to agree whether – and how fast – to withdraw the fiscal stimuli that were put in place last year. The next six months could also see a full-blown fiscal crisis in Greece or Latvia. Dealing with these challenges, without any unfortunate Bean-like mishaps, will be Mr Zapatero’s biggest challenge over the next six months”.