The so-called „European Semester” was elaborated with a view to ensuring closer economic cooperation between EU Member States, and it would not be proper if this process was burdened with out-of-scope issues, some of which fall under national and not EU competence – said Enikő Győri, MFA Minister of State in charge of EU Affairs, after the meeting of EU European Affairs Ministers on 19 November.

At this meeting, the General Affairs Council reviewed, among others, the schedule of the roughly six-month annual coordination process for the first part of next year, during which the economic policy plans of Member States are compared with common European factors and objectives in an attempt to harmonise the various Member State priorities. Member States were compelled to introduce this regular practice of coordination called the “European Semester” in order to overcome the economic crisis.

Enikő Győri explained that at the latest meeting of the General Affairs Council, several Member States remarked that although the European Commission was trying to define the scope of the issues to be included within the European Semester as broadly as possible, it would not be wise to forget that the process was justified only by the objective of closer economic policy coordination.

The Hungarian Minister of State questioned whether it was reasonable to discuss the “justice scoreboard” within the framework of the European Semester.  As she added, several Member State representatives have also articulated similar doubts about the inclusion of the “social scoreboard” in discussions.

These scoreboards are compiled by the European Commission. The former enumerates the calculable performance of the justice and judicial systems of the various Member States, whereas the latter mainly concentrates on unemployment indicators, which form part of the economic performance tables that have been published for several years now.

Enikő Győri also pointed out that during the analytical and objective-setting process of the European Semester, EU fundamental principles such as the principle of equal treatment must be observed consistently. As she noted, these basic principles have been disregarded on several occasions. The next European Semester is to begin earlier than usual because the European Union must complete the 2014 Semester before the European Parliament elections scheduled for May 2014.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs)