Today's Date:

CLIMATE CHANGE

THE PRESIDENT - (...) This European Council had important issues to deal with, and has allowed Europeans to make progress in a number of spheres and, above all, to affirm their unity, which is obviously essential. This was the case at our dinner on the first evening, Thursday, with the American President. We had a very free and indeed very pleasant conversation with him on what for us Europeans is an essential issue: the fight against global warming.

We stated our position clearly and unanimously and told him how just how essential we considered it is to implement the Kyoto Protocol, as scheduled. I hope that our unanimous determination will be taken on board.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

After that comment on climate change, let me take the opportunity to say that, in line with the wish of the Swedish presidency - which has, from our point of view, been a great success, taken place under the best possible conditions and been conducted very skilfully in a spirit of solidarity and with a desire to seek positive compromises - this summit will go down as an important one as regards the environment, because the EU has laid the foundations of a genuine strategy for sustainable development.

We have adopted the principles for policy in this area - not, of course, the methods for implementing them, which we have not had time to study - drawn up by the Commission and communicated to us barely a fortnight ago.

EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT MODEL

And over and above that, our ambition is to take an important additional step towards defining a European development model.

For a long time, Europe was political and technical, then, bit by bit, it became economic and financial. On the economic front, it has, over the past few years, made progress notably in the harmonization of our economies and it's continuing to do so - I'll come back to this in a moment. It has for some years now taken on board the social demands so as to establish a genuine European social model. And now it has just incorporated the ecological, environmental dimension. The fact that it has economic, social, ecological and environmental dimensions means that we are capable of together building a genuine European development model. And, from this standpoint, Göteborg has been important.

IRISH REFERENDUM/NICE TREATY

The European Council, of course, considered the consequences of the results of last week's Irish referendum. We listened with great interest to the explanations given by Mr Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister. Naturally, we indicated our respect for the position of our Irish friends and the result of the Irish people's vote. But we also very clearly reaffirmed, as ministers had done at the last GAC (General Affairs Council) two or three days ago, our unanimous refusal to reopen the Nice Treaty, our desire to continue the Nice Treaty ratification process as scheduled - and, as you know, for France this will be done very soon - and our determination that there should be no delay to enlargement.

ENLARGEMENT

In fact, enlargement has been at the heart of our discussions in Göteborg and I must say that the Swedish presidency has done an altogether job in this sphere as in the others. They have closed a considerable number of the negotiating chapters and, basically, I believe one will be able to say that Göteborg saw the clear affirmation of the definitive, irreversible character of the enlargement. I believe that, from that point of view, it will be one of the key dates of the European Union's history.

And that allowed us to send a very clear and strong message to the candidate countries - with whom, as you know, we lunched yesterday - who all stated their positions. They perfectly understood and took on board this dimension of our work in Göteborg, which is obviously particularly important for them, as, not always informed of the details of the EU's deliberations, they had recently been worried by the result of the Irish referendum.

FUTURE OF THE EU

Then, on the future of the EU, the presidency reported to us on the progress of debates in the member States, and things have got off to a good start. As you know, thanks to the initiatives she took regarding the debate at both national and local levels, France, I would say, has got a head start. And, as scheduled, at the Laeken summit in Belgium, we'll be able to take the necessary decisions in order to prepare the 2004 conference.

BROAD ECONOMIC POLICY GUIDELINES

We also adopted the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines. At a time when Europe is experiencing a bit of a slowdown in economic activity, as in fact are the United States and the world as a whole, we, the French, have asked that Europe deliver a collective response and that we pool our resources by coordinating our policies more effectively, so that we can withstand it better, maintain our growth and so preserve jobs - as far as is possible, of course.

SECURITY/BALLISTIC PROLIFERATION/US MISSILE DEFENCE SHIELD

We then discussed security - security as a whole. In this area, the Göteborg Council will probably be a milestone, an absolutely essential one for me since it marks the realization at the political level of the need to combat effectively what is an as insidious as dangerous evil: proliferation and particularly ballistic proliferation. And so it is here in Göteborg that we collectively became aware of the pressing need to fight proliferation, especially ballistic proliferation, i.e. that of missiles.

Today, this very day, the Fifteen clearly signalled the priority they attach to this. There are obviously a number of proposals as to how to combat missile proliferation. There are the American ones, on which we have of course opened a dialogue and which we can understand even though, as you know, we have a priori a number of reservations to get across. But we will do this in the discussions with our American allies.

MTCR CODE OF CONDUCT

There's also another way to fight proliferation: today in Göteborg, the Fifteen clearly signalled the priority they attached to prevention. Prevention means fewer weapons and so greater confidence and less danger. And we, all the Fifteen adopted a French proposal, which I put forward recently - on 8 June - in my speech to the IHEDN, to universalize the MTCR's Code of Conduct, and possibly devote an international conference to the task. In fact the aim is to create a new effective, binding, international instrument to combat proliferation, and I refer you to the declaration adopted on this issue.

MACEDONIA

Finally, we talked about Macedonia and the Middle East.

As regards Macedonia, as you can imagine, great concern was voiced about the situation. We heard an excellent report from Javier Solana who has just come back from Skopje where he has done a remarkable job. We congratulated him. But the ceasefire is extremely fragile. The political dialogue between the parties is also extremely fragile and action must be taken to avoid a deterioration of the situation which could lead to an open crisis within days or weeks.

So we decided to make as great an effort as possible, particularly through the High Representative, to find a political solution. For ten years, Macedonia has been a model of cohabitation, inter-ethnic coexistence in the Balkans. She must return to that path, particularly by thwarting the action of the extremists and setting in train a genuine process of political reforms allowing Albanian speakers, even though they have problems integrating, cultural problems which we can perfectly well understand, to have a place befitting their dignity in Macedonian society.

So to step up its action, the EU has decided to appoint, for a few weeks, a Permanent Representative in Skopje, who will of course act under the authority of the High Representative, Mr Solana. And when that decision was taken, France put forward the candidature of M. François Léotard, a former French Defence Minister. It will be considered at the next GAC, in a few days' time, and I have every reason to think it will be adopted.

MIDDLE EAST

Finally, on the Middle East, the Swedish presidency, which had, as you know, visited the region with Mr Solana, reported to us on its mission. There too, the situation is obviously - I'm not telling you anything you don't know - extremely fragile. And we talked to the US President about this. The European Union action, liaising, of course, with the United States, has two objectives: the first is to consolidate the truce and transform it into a genuine ceasefire. The second is to get the Mitchell Report implemented as soon as possible so that the heat is permanently taken out of the situation. Of course, when it comes to the Middle East, the European Union is far more active today than it was before, with the former US administration. Today, it has, I think one can say, become a recognized player. And of course, it will place all its resources at the disposal of the quest for peace in this region as in the others.

That's what I wanted to tell you. Prime Minister?

ENLARGEMENT

THE PRIME MINISTER - (...) As regards to the enlargement, I think the first point one can make is that peoples are indeed aspiring to join us, to join this peaceful democratic community of States which is seeking prosperity.

The problem with the candidate countries isn't so much - we were talking again about this at the lunch with our partners, the candidate countries - one of unifying Europe, because Europe is now unified, politically it is no longer divided; the problem is to bring together European countries from another area into a single community and that's basically where the difficulty lies, but it also makes the ongoing process a gripping one.

From this point of view, we sought, as President Chirac said, in this Göteborg summit to send a strong political message of support to the candidate countries, telling them that the process was irreversible, and in fact we noted that in the case of many countries extremely serious progress had been made in the negotiations. We have set a time frame, a possible closure of the negotiations at the end of 2002 for the countries which are ready with, as the objective, as you know, their participation in the 2004 European Parliament elections, and the candidate countries present at today's lunch felt that the very fact that we had symbolically set the date of 2002 was extremely important.

But that doesn't mean that the candidate countries should relax their efforts and the conclusions make it clear that only those which are ready will be able to join. We ourselves stressed the comprehensive nature of the negotiations, saying that all the issues had to be dealt with, both those to do with the free movement of people and workers, and those to do with the environment, standards and agricultural issues, for example.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

On sustainable development, I really think the President said everything: France subscribes to the adopted priorities, but the Commission's communication is very recent, it needs a technical analysis, expert consideration at member State level and by our national services. That's why the first conclusion supports the guidelines and proposes an approach to policy-making in this sphere.

It was important to point out as regards the Kyoto Protocol, that the EU remained united and determined in the face of the Americans who, between now and Bonn - since they say they share the same goal - will have to find a way of their own of subscribing to it. The EU pledged to ratify the Kyoto protocol.

BROAD ECONOMIC POLICY GUIDELINES

On the economic issues, I shall not repeat what President Chirac said regarding the importance of the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines - the BEPG - because you know that for France these are a key element in the coordination of European economic policies, but I shall perhaps emphasize one point, which is that, at France's instigation, we also resumed discussion of the tax package. We had rather got the impression, despite all the progress made under Swedish presidency, that the technical negotiations were perhaps marking time a bit, and we reiterated and got reiteration of the priority nature of this issue for the community.

MONEY LAUNDERING

We, I brought up another matter at the dinner with President Bush on Thursday evening, since we have been worried by the change in the US positions with regard to the discussions in the OECD and even perhaps to those in the FATF, especially as the Americans were co-chairing these with us, and this turnaround has greatly concerned us. We told President Bush that a country as concerned, legitimately, as the United States is about the problems of drugs, terrorism, international crime could not turn its back on the fight against money laundering, since this is often the way that form of crime or threat is financed. We hope that the US delegation will perhaps have become more aware of the need to address this problem. (...)./.