GERMANY:As the EU presidency transfers to Berlin, the German chancellor is trying to dampen high expectations for progress on a challenging policy agenda, writes Derek Scallyin Berlin
German officials have been working long hours to prepare for the country's EU presidency next year, but lately Berlin's main concern alongside policy has been dampening expectations.
Already chancellor Angela Merkel's favoured tool in domestic politics, it could serve Germany well over the next months to lower expectations to such a point where any progress at all is seen as a breakthrough.
"The expectations are sometimes set too high," said Dr Merkel to foreign correspondents in Berlin. "But Germany can achieve a lot when it works with a lot of good friends in Europe and when we all pull in one direction."
Faced with a long list of policy demands, Berlin's three presidency guidelines are: getting Europe to speak with one voice, formulating answers to the "future" questions of climate change and energy, and proposing a way out of the constitutional blockade.
Regardless of what's possible in Germany's 181 days, expectations of the Germans themselves as honest brokers are also high - and justifiably so.
"The chancellor already impressed partners with her constructive style with the budget compromise," said Jan Techau, European analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).
"Merkel presents herself in a decisive fashion but without huge verbal demands or overbearing suggestions. Instead she presents herself as a European political force with the self-confidence that Germany is a large, important country - and above all she has diplomatic skill."
That skill will be required in all initiatives Germany plans to address: energy and economic policy, post-Kyoto environment policy, a new bilateral agreement with Russia, the Turkey-Cyprus stumbling block hindering Ankara's accession negotiations and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The lightest diplomatic touch will be needed to address Berlin's most pressing foreign policy issue: the future of Kosovo.
Constitutionally still a part of Serbia, the breakaway province has been managed by the UN and Nato since the 1999 war. Its status could be clarified after upcoming Serbian elections and a report from Martti Ahtisarri, the United Nations special envoy on Kosovo.
European countries want to see an independent Kosovo - though Moscow, a traditional supporter of Belgrade, is more sceptical. Russian approval will be needed for a change of Kosovo's status in the UN Security Council.
Just how well-disposed Russia is towards the EU's ambitions for Kosovo could depend on the progress - and tone - of negotiations with Moscow on a new bilateral treaty before the existing one runs out at the end of 2007.
Berlin is under pressure to toughen up its language towards Russia - in particular the erosion of human rights, the recent high-profile murders of Kremlin critics and Moscow's manipulation of energy deliveries to strengthen its political hand.
At the same time, Germany has special ties with Russia - in particular the €4 billion pipeline being built between the two countries under the Baltic sea.
Foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told yesterday's Süddeutsche Zeitung one could "not be uncritical" of "recent developments" in Russia.
However megaphone diplomacy prompted an allergic reaction in Moscow and endangered Europe's long-term goal of "holding Russia irreversibly on the road to European values like democracy and the rule of law," he said.
Russia's relations with individual EU countries will complicate the spring summit, where Dr Merkel hopes to present an "energy action plan" to commit member states to common energy goals, in particular the protection of raw materials.
While she supports a common energy market, Dr Merkel is anxious to protect Germany's energy giants from European Commission plans to prise away their electricity grid.
Environment policy is close to the heart of Dr Merkel, a former environment minister, in particular pushing the question of where countries must go in the post-Kyoto process, also likely to be a theme of Germany's G8 presidency.
Finally, Berlin hopes to hotwire the constitutional treaty back into life two years after it was rejected by French and Dutch voters.
On March 25th, she will welcome her EU counterparts to the German capital to mark the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome by signing a "Berlin Declaration" that will try to address what exactly European values are.
"Berlin has been doing expectation management but at the end the success of its presidency will be measured on the constitution and whether Germany manages to deliver the big report of a timetable and content compromises in June," said Dr Techau. Observers in Germany and abroad are waiting to see if Berlin will see next year's changing of the political guard in France and Britain as an opportunity to leave a distinctive German mark on the European agenda. Britain's former Europe minister Dennis McShane, in an apparent nod to the verbal excesses of the constitutional treaty, urged Germany yesterday in the Süddeutsche Zeitung yesterday to use "prose not poetry" to write "the first pages . . . of a new European script".