The Juncker plan focusing on jobs and growth is the top priority of the 2015 European CommissionWork Programme, First Vice-President for Inter-institutional Relations of the European Commission,Frans Timmermans, said at a press conference in Strasbourg on December 16.
Moments earlier, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Timmermans participated in a plenary debate on the Work Programme that sets out the European Commissionplans for the 12 months ahead.
The Commission’s 2015 work programme, in which it outlines 23 new proposals and lists 80 items of pending legislation for withdrawal or amendment, concentrates on a set of concrete initiatives, including Juncker’s €315 billion investment offensive, an ambitious Digital Single Market package, creating a European Energy Union, a new policy on migration, a fair taxation environment and cutting red tape. The EU Parliament will vote a resolution in January on the “new start” promised by the Commission.
“The Juncker plan: jobs and growth. That’s our top priority because the Commission will have to concentrate much of its energy in the first months of 2015 in putting this project in place,” Timmermans told the press conference.
The MEPs will debate Commission plans to mobilise €315 billion to boost growth, jobs and competitiveness on December 17 in Strasbourg, on the eve of the European Council meeting on December 18-19 in Brussels where it will top the agenda.
“Once the European Council has agreed to it, there’s no doubt where the top priority will be. And if you look at our priorities many of these priorities fits into the Juncker plan,” Timmermans said, adding that the Digital Single Market and the Energy Union are all potential areas of projects that could perfectly fit into the possibility of public-private partnership on infrastructure and long-term investment.
Asked by New Europe whether the EU can overcome the differences between member states to create an Energy Union within 2015 that would also address the current tensions with Russia, Timmermans said the European Commission put forward today the first steps towards an Energy Union that many members states have asked for. He noted that at a recent meeting of the General Affairs Council on energy “every single minister on the table set energy should be the top priority for the Commission next year. So we will put into progress.”
He noted that European Commission Vice President or Energy Union Maros Sefkovichas worked hard on taking very concrete steps forward. “I count on the constructive attitude in the Council but I shan’t hide that there are many, many problems we need to overcome. Because there is no internal market on energy, there is a lacking infrastructure between member states and sometimes even in member states and there is for some member states unacceptably high – in their perception – dependency on just one provider of energy,” Timmermans said.
He added, however, that he sees a consensus in the EU, in the Council, that Energy Union is of strategic importance for Europe’s future. “I’m rather optimistic and it will create a stronger position of the European Union vis-à-vis Russia,” he said. “Russia is part of our continent. Russia will always be part of the political reality in Europe. But the position of the European Union vis-à-vis Russia is stronger if we are not in a position to be blackmailed by Russia with energy,” he said.
“On the other hand, the stability of the European Union will be stronger if we have an offer on the table for Russia to be part of an energy construction in Europe that will offer Russia to also sell its raw materials in the European market; so ‘yes’ to interdependency, ‘no’ to the possibility of blackmail,” Timmermans quipped.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/commission%E2%80%99s-work-programme-focuses-jobs-and-growth