The Heads of State and of Government of the European Union are due to meet in Brussels on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 March 2003 for their “Spring Summit” traditionally dedicated to economic and social issues. The Greek Presidency has invited the Prime Ministers of the candidate countries (the ten in the process of membership, plus Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey) to attend the summit on Saturday. The European Council has three fundamental questions on its agenda: first, a review of the objective formulated by the Lisbon Summit to “turn the European economy into the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010”; second, a discussion reserved for the Fifteen of the progress of the work of the Convention on the future of Europe, with particular reference to institutional questions and proposals for common external and security policy, in the presence of the president of the Convention Valery Giscard d’Estaing; and third, an evaluation of recent international developments. The Fifteen are called to reflect on the slowness with which the national governments are adopting the necessary reforms for the achievement of the objectives fixed by the Lisbon Strategy, a slowness compounded both by the discouraging growth forecasts (those of the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank don’t exceed 1.3% for 2003), and by the economic uncertainties linked to the Iraqi crisis and a war with unforeseeable international consequences. In spite of the urgency of the economic and social agenda, Greek premier Simitis might be forced by the news arriving from the Gulf to reduce the space reserved for its discussion, and oblige the Fifteen to conduct instead an emergency debate on the deep divisions by which they are split on common external and security policy.
