Denmark ready to challenge USA in Autumn 2002
The global pact is a contribution to the Global Summit in Pretoria in South Africa in September 2002, when Denmark will be holding the EU Presidency.
The Danish government has launched an ambitious project that should enable the EU to challenge the USA's position as the world's number one and instead make the EU the centre of rotation on the global arena, writes Danish paper Politiken. "It is evidently a part of the vision that the EU should play a stronger part in the world - also in relation to the USA," says Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mogens Lykketoft, to Politiken before Thursday's Summit between USA's president Bush and the EU.
Mr. Lykketoft's goal is that the EU should be godfather to a 'global pact', comprising environmental policy, development aid, and trade policy, according to Politiken. The fundamental idea is that the developing countries should be obliged to work for an environmentally sustainable development and accept social demands in their trade policy in return for market access to the rich countries and more development aid.
This 'global pact' is the Danish contribution to the Global Summit in Pretoria in South Africa in September 2002, when Denmark will be holding the EU Presidency. According to Mr. Lykketoft, the 'global pact' should have the EU as a leading force, as the Americans have retracted from this position by rejecting the Kyoto Agreement and by president Bush's signals about "America first". But Mr. Lykketoft is also aware of the importance of an American engagement.
According to Politiken, the EU Commission and the other member governments are at present considering the Danish project. And, according to Politiken, a centrally placed Commission civil servant says that it corresponds very well with the Commissions own thoughts on the subject.
But even the perspectives for the internal Danish debate is important. "It should be used to show the Danes that the EU might serve sensible purposes," says Mogens Lykketoft, according to Politiken.
The leading Danish opposition figure, Anders Fogh Rasmussen from Venstre (Liberals) guarantees that the project will be continued, even if he will be EU President in the Autumn of 2002.
"Is sounds right to connect environment, trade and development in a global agreement, and I am in absolute agreement that the EU should play a stronger part in the world. If the EU succeeds in heading a global agreement of that kind, it would be the first demonstration of the EU as a factor of power in world politics. And that is something that I should most willingly co-operate on," says Anders Fogh Rasmussen to Politiken.
Written by Luise Hemmer Pihl Edited by Lisbeth Kirk