The United States will not support the nomination of Mr Caio Koch-Weser of Germany for managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the White House said yesterday.
The EU's special summit on competitiveness in Lisbon next month will set a series of testing targets for reform of the European economy, cutting unemployment and poverty, and completion of the single market in financial services, energy and telecommunications. EU Ministers for Finance yesterday gave a broad welcome to a Commission paper for the summit which sets out the priorities for what it calls "a paradigm shift driven by globalisation and the new knowledge economy".
The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, said he believed that Lisbon would accept targets, many of which in the field of information technology were already being implemented in Ireland. Ireland is expected to submit an initiative on e-commerce to the summit.
Ministers also agreed to back the German nominee for the managing directorship of the IMF, Mr Caio Koch-Weiser, in succession to Mr Michel Camdessus who stepped down earlier this month.
The willingness of EU leaders to set specific targets and to use benchmarking to compare relative economic, legislative and social performance marks an important evolution in confidence in the system of peer review which is driving much of the EU economic debate. When the former Irish social affairs commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, pushed for just such ambitious and specific targets two years ago he was rebuffed.
The Lisbon strategy was based, the British Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, said, on a "natural progression", building on the national employment action plans which have been in place for the last year and the system of mutual review by member-states of each others' policies. Now it was possible to set EUwide targets, he said. Among the Commission targets likely to be agreed are:
Raising average employment rates from 61 per cent to 65 per cent by 2005
Reducing average unemployment to 4 per cent by 2010
All schools on Internet by next year
Digital literacy for all workers and school leavers by 2003 and all citizens by 2005.
Halving of the number of 18-24 year-olds without post-secondary education by 2004.
Increasing participation of women in the workforce from 51 per cent to 60 per cent by 2010.
Halving child poverty by 2010 and reducing numbers below the poverty line from 18 per cent today to 10 per cent by 2010.
2001 deadline for removal of barriers to single market in services.
Full integration of EU energy market by 2004 and financial markets by 2005.
Annual benchmarking of all research activity by next year.
A failure to match US research rates and its ability to take up new technologies is also highlighted. "European telecommunications charges must fall further if the Internet is to be accessible to all," the paper says.
Meanwhile the first visit by Austria's Freedom Party finance minister, Mr Karl-Heinz Grasser, was met by only the most muted of protests in the form of a declaration from the presidency that the EU is based on democracy and tolerance. Anti-Nazi stickers were worn by the French and Belgian ministers.
Asked if he backed the warning by his leader, Mr Jorg Haider, that the InterGovernmental Conference would be held up if Austria was not treated as an equal at all EU forums, he said that he belived that normalisation of relations was beginning. But Austria would defend its legal rights, he said.
White House spokesman Mr Joe Lockhart asked Europe to nominate a better candidate for the position. "The US is not prepared to support the German candidate," Mr Lockhart said. "We don't believe he meets the criteria of a strong candidate of maximum stature that will command broad support from around the world."
