The President of the European Commission Romano Prodi intervened during the plenary session of the European Parliament (EP) in January, more particularly in the course of the debate on the programme of the Spanish Presidency of the EU. Prodi presented the “Spring Report” recently adopted by the Commission in preparation for the Council meeting in Barcelona in March which will be dedicated to economic, social and environmental questions in the framework of a strategy of sustainable development. The main points of the Report concern the need to re-launch “an active policy of employment”, to “reform and complete the internal market” and to create the “information society” by boosting investments in education, training and research. In his address, Romano Prodi also tackled the question of the revival of Euro-Mediterranean relations. In particular, the President of the Commission confirmed the commitment “to turn into a reality the joint idea of the Presidency and the Commission to establish a Bank of the Mediterranean as an “institution dedicated to development”, whether as an autonomous bank or as a structure of the European Investment Bank. In relation to the process of institutional reform of the European Union, Romano Prodi expressed both the Commission’s full support to the President of the Convention Giscard d’Estaing and its close collaboration with the EP, with a view to “ensuring that the debate be intense and fruitful and, above all, that it may give rise to a vision for the future with which the majority of our citizens can identify”.
