Jargon clouds EU shake up

Mr Prodi struggled to get his point across

By EU correspondent Angus Roxburgh

The European Commission has published proposals for a shake-up in the way the EU is governed, aimed at raising public support for it.

The Commission President, Romano Prodi, said reforms had to start at once in order to regain the confidence of disaffected citizens.

The paradox is that people want the EU to take effective action but they are losing confidence in its institutions

Romano Prodi

But Mr Prodi's plodding presentation, with flip-charts full of barely comprehensible jargon, left many journalists feeling that 18 months of work by a large team of experts had brought forth a "reform plan" with little chance of changing public perceptions of the EU.

Europe's citizens find the EU's political system "complex and obscure," Mr Prodi admitted, as he unveiled a White Paper with the obscure title: European Governance.

The report contains a stinging critique of how the Union's institutions are run and how they are perceived by the public.

"The paradox is," Mr Prodi said, "that people want the EU to take effective action but they are losing confidence in its institutions."

Remedies

The paper also suggests remedies, which the Commission wants to see carried out at once, so that public confidence is regained before a new set of treaty changes is negotiated in 2004.

Critics say the EU is too slow at making key decisions

The most important suggested reform is that the current body of EU legislation should be simplified - and unnecessary detail thrown out.

More so-called "framework directives" should be passed - that is, broad-brush laws that give national governments more flexibility implementing them, taking into account local conditions.

These measures would help to make EU laws more comprehensible, and also speed up their implementation.

At the moment it can be painfully slow. Most proposals take about three years to pass into national law.

Last year, only five out of 82 internal market directives due to be implemented in the member states actually were.

'Two-level partnership'

The Commission also proposes better involvement of regions, cities, trade unions and non-governmental organisations in policy-making - ending the current "two-level partnership" of national governments and central institutions.

Support for the EU is falling across the continent

The Commission says that the three central EU bodies - the Commission itself, the European Parliament, and the Council of Ministers (made up of ministers from the 15 memebr states) - should concentrate on their "core activities".

That would mean the Commission, for example, getting less bogged down in day-to-day management.

Much of the rest of the document, however, contains often-heard calls for greater openness and better consultation - platitudes that have failed over the years to bring about the goal of engaging the public in the EU's activities.

Recent polls show a continuing decline in support for EU membership across Europe.