Spain's low-profile EU presidency ends in shadow of crisis (Feature)

By Sinikka Tarvainen Jun 23, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Madrid - A few days after Spain took over the rotating European Union presidency on January 1, hackers broke into the presidency's website.

For a moment, visitors to the website were no longer greeted by a picture of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, but by that of Mr Bean, a British comic character famous for his stumbles and mishaps.

Despite winning praise for some achievements such as boosting trade relations with Latin America, Spain was unable to shake off a Mr-Beanish image during its six-month presidency as it struggled to rise out of its deepest economic crisis in decades.

Spain's financial difficulties dented trust in its capacity to steer the EU out of the global crisis, while Spanish leaders were sometimes left in the shadow of the EU's new leaders, permanent president Herman Van Rompuy and foreign policy director Catherine Ashton.

The Spanish EU presidency may have been 'silent,' but it was also 'tremendously efficient,' Leire Pajin from Zapatero's Socialist Party said as Spain prepared to hand the presidency over to Belgium on July 1.

EU affairs secretary of state Diego Lopez Garrido stressed Spain's involvement in key moves to improve economic governance and to rescue the Greek economy after it was engulfed by a debt crisis.

'We are entering a new era in the EU, and that has been done during the Spanish presidency,' Lopez Garrido said.

The daily El Mundo, however, said the presidency was ending with 'a sense of failure.' The government had overestimated Spain's weight and influence within the EU, the daily complained.

'I have not seen any other (EU) presidency which faced circumstances as difficult as the Spanish one,' European Commission Vice-President Marcos Sefcovic pointed out.

Spain faced the task of beginning to apply the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which was meant to make decision-making simpler and swifter. Zapatero was the first leader holding the EU presidency to share power with a permanent EU president and a de-facto foreign minister.

Spain's relatively smooth handling of the situation eased the transition, but also led to Spain having a low profile at EU summits, according to analysts in Madrid.

There was some controversy over the performance of Ashton, whom Spanish media accused of constantly skipping meetings, while her representatives said Madrid organized some of the meetings at too short a notice.

The Spanish EU presidency also suffered some major foreign policy setbacks. They included the cancellation of a Madrid summit between the EU and the United States after US President Barack Obama called off his attendance, allegedly over weak EU support on issues such as the Afghan conflict.

A summit of the Union for the Mediterranean in Barcelona was also postponed after several Arab countries threatened to boycott it if controversial Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman were to attend.

In yet another setback, Spain failed to push through one of its foreign policy priorities, as Germany and several other EU countries blocked a Spanish plan to upgrade EU relations with Cuba.

Isolating the Cuban regime had done little to persuade Havana to respect human rights and democracy, Spanish officials kept arguing, but the death of hunger-striking Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata in February dealt a final blow to the Spanish plan for the time being.

Highlights included a summit with Latin America in Madrid, where the EU signed trade agreements with Central America, Peru and Colombia, and relaunched talks with the trade bloc Mercosur about a free trade area of nearly 800 million people.

Spain was also seen as having done a decent job in mediating in the Balkans, local media reported.

The Spanish government takes special pride in a broad agreement to adopt an EU-wide restraining order to protect victims of domestic violence, Lopez Garrido said.

There was, however, some controversy over that plan, which was criticized by European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding.

In its final weeks, the Spanish EU presidency got increasingly bogged down in the country's economic morass as fears mounted that Spain itself could need the kinds of emergency measures that it had helped to push through for Greece.

Spain's budget deficit has soared to 11.2 per cent - far above the EU limit of 3 per cent - and unemployment to 20 per cent, figures which left Madrid in no position to give economic advice to others.