At a press conference held at the end of the spring European Council meeting, the President of the European Commission, Mr José Manuel Barroso, congratulated Slovenia on its first Presidency at the helm of the European Union. “I congratulate the Slovenian Prime Minister, Janez Janša, and his team on a very professional summit,” stressed the President of the European Commission at the end of the spring summit, the first under the Slovenian Presidency.

 

Prime Minister Janez Janša and President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso (Photo: Bor Slana/Bobo)

 

The Commission President observed that a Presidency’s success can best be judged by the Council conclusions – in terms of content, not the number of pages. “If you examine the conclusions of this summit meeting, you will agree that there is a great deal of substance, much of it related to very complex issues: financial instability, the renewed Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs, energy and climate change,” stressed José Manuel Barroso, describing them as highly important issues that will shape the future of Europe. He said that, in all these areas, the Slovenian Presidency had worked to clarify conclusions and had achieved substantial progress compared to a general agreement of one year ago which, Mr Barroso added, had been a general agreement on objectives that now must be achieved.

 

Prime Minister Janez Janša and Secretary General of the Council of the EU Javier Solana (Photo: Bor Slana/Bobo)

 

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia and current President of the European Council, Janez Janša, giving his initial impressions at the close of the spring summit, said he was pleased to see the adoption of some conclusions that had been in the air for some time already. “They could not have been adopted without the extremely favourable attitude of all the institutions involved at the European level, in particular the European Commission and the EU Council Secretariat,” he noted, or without the highly supportive and constructive involvement of the Heads of State and Government, with whom the Presidency had been in continuous communication, aligning positions, over the last ten days. The European Council meeting had therefore “gone as expected, thanks to the huge efforts, and many sleepless hours, invested by all those responsible for its preparation in order to align views ahead of the meeting or at least secure appropriate answers to the dilemmas likely to be raised,” concluded Slovenian Premier Janez Janša.