NationalPlatform.Org

Every year some 120 Belgian ambassadors abroad come to Brussels for an information day. This year foreign Minister Karel De Gucht outlined the priorities for the Belgian EU presidency, the second half of 2010. He especially wants to combat the tendency of the bigger EU countries to dominate.

“The European Union may not become an institute run by a small elite group consisting of the larger member states. And this is exactly the direction we are going in at the moment. It’s the big dream of more than one leader of a big member state or a state that thinks it is big to run the show.”

Mr De Gucht points out that in the spirit of the treaties there must be cooperation, not domination. In his opinion Belgium is certainly not alone in its criticism of the growing influence of the larger member states.
“We’ve been saying this for some time- and now I’m noticing that increasingly more countries share our analysis- except for the big countries themselves- that Europe is not served by an elite group of directors.”

Belgian Foreign Minister: EU increasingly governed by the few

Euractiv reports that Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht has said that the ‘institutional balance’ of the EU is in “danger”. With just a year to go until the Belgian EU Presidency, he warned that the EU is increasingly governed by an “executive board of big countries”. Citing the recent G20 summit in London he said, “The London G20 meeting has first been prepared in Berlin by a small group of [EU] member countries, that is, those of them who are G20 members. The General Affairs Council was barely consulted, in fact only post factum.”

EurActiv Knack