European Union: Europe´s First Government Crisis
Berlin at the end of March. Up to that moment the meeting in the new capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, the country that holds the presidency of the Union in the first half of 1999, was supposed to find a solution for the Agenda 2000, a program for the reform of European agricultural policy and aid for depressed areas, and to prepare the further eastward expansion of the Union.
The discussion on the Agenda 2000 appeared very difficult right from the start and had already provoked a visible crack in the Franco-German axis which had been the Union's driving force for at least two decades. Since the election of Jacques Chirac and the growing financial difficulties of Germany after reunification this stabilizing element of European politics has become weaker and weaker and seems now almost vanished.
While discussing these critical financial items the European leaders also had to consider the reaction of the international financial markets, especially for the weakness of the new Euro currency. After its start in January the new European currency has already lost about 10 % of its value in relation to the dollar.
If the Berlin summit had turned out to be a failure, this would have added crisis to crisis. As current chairman of the European Council, Schröder therefore visited fourteen capitals in only five days to meet his prime minister colleagues, promote his compromise model for the Agenda 2000 and find a successor for Santer.
After the negative experience with the weak Santer, Europe's leaders agreed now that the next president should be stronger. The British prime minister Tony Blair, after meeting Schröder in London, spoke of the need for a "real political heavyweight."
One of the front-runners for the job was the secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana, who wasn't free to follow the call, however, because his leadership was required in the Kosovo conflict. This opened the path for Italy's former prime minister Romano Prodi, a pragmatic Christian Democrat, who has won much sympathy, when he succeeded, against all odds, to qualify his country for the Monetary Union. Since his government had been able of "knocking Italy's indisciplined public finances into more rigorous shape" (The Economist), he appeared the best qualified person to do the same kind of work in Bruxelles.
As a Christian Democrat leader of a center-left coalition in his home country he was even a good compromise candidate between the two
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