The debt crisis will top the agenda.
Efforts to ease the EU’s economic troubles will top the to-do list of Hungary’s six-month presidency agenda.
It will be Hungary’s task to steer member states and the European Parliament towards accords on the measures intended to underpin the stability of the euro and to put the EU’s fragile economic recovery on a better footing.
Péter Györkös, Hungary’s permanent representative to the Council of Ministers, insists that his country’s influence is not diluted by the fact that it is not in the eurozone. “Hungary is a member state with a derogation, it’s not an opt-out,” he said. “We don’t want to be neutral…we also have our share in the job.”
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The “number one priority”, according to the ambassador, will be to ensure agreement by June on six legislative measures designed to reinforce and extend the EU’s rules on economic governance.
The six proposals, presented by the European Commission in September, aim to strengthen the Stability and Growth Pact. They include taking account of public debt levels within the excessive deficit procedure, correcting macro-economic imbalances that lead to wide differences in competitiveness, improving budgetary planning and accounting, and imposing tougher sanctions on eurozone members that violate deficit and debt rules.
Hungary will also preside over the first run of the so-called European semester, a six-month period during which national governments will submit their national budgets for review by the Commission and member states, to remedy inconsistencies and ensure they comply with broad economic guidelines agreed at EU level.
In addition to getting the new governance rules in place, Hungary will have to lead discussions on a rapid treaty change to incorporate a permanent crisis bailout mechanism – which is still being hammered out in talks between member states and the Commission.
Hungarian officials have said they hope to secure “a very limited and surgical” amendment to the treaty to avoid the need for any member state to hold a referendum to ratify the change. Hungary’s officials expect that the scale of the challenge will depend largely on the nature of the agreement reached at this week’s European Council (16-17 December).
Implementation of the Europe 2020 jobs and growth strategy will figure prominently on Hungary’s agenda. Along with the Commission, Hungary will have to make sure member states properly implement the agreed targets to increase employment, education, research and training, to fight poverty, and to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Hungary will also play a leading role in pushing member states towards a view on additional reforms to financial supervision that are likely to emerge in the form of Commission proposals – notably to boost transparency on capital markets and to revise capital requirements of banks – as well as on reforms to improve the functioning of the EU’s single market.