Press Conference

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
NEWSMAKER INTERVIEW

GUEST: MARIO MONTI
EUROPEAN UNION COMMISSIONER FOR ANTI-TRUST

MODERATOR: PETER HICKMAN, VICE CHAIRMAN, NEWSMAKER COMMITTEE

OCTOBER 6, 2004

Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, DC

PETER HICKMAN: Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming. Welcome to the National Press Club [NPC] and another NPC Morning Newsmaker. Buongiorno. My name is Peter Hickman. I’m a former USA Foreign Service officer, now a free-lance journalist and vice chairman of the club’s Newsmaker Committee.

And before introducing our newsmaker I’ll make the standard announcements. One is there will be a sound file, or an audio file – otherwise known as a tape recording – made of the event and it will be posted on the club’s website at Press.org, and it will be there about 30 days. And I notice that the Federal News Service is here, or at least their tape recorder is, and they – it’s a commercial organization which will sell you a tape or a transcript. The club will also sell you a copy of the cassette. Second, please turn off any of the you-know-whats – cell phones and so forth.

There’s a list of other speakers coming up – you may have it already – and you’re welcome to come to some of those – all of those. And there’s some information regarding this morning’s newsmaker. And that newsmaker, as you know, is the European Union Commissioner for Antit-Trust, Mr. Mario Monti.

Commissioner Monti, welcome to the National Press Club – welcome back to the National Press Club. We’re very glad you could be with us.

And I also want to welcome back to the National Press Club – and thank someone who originally suggested and helped organize this newsmaker with Commissioner Monti – Mr. Anthony Gooch, the press spokesman for the European Commission, and also Maeve O'Beirne, of your office, who is not here but we’re dealing with her too.

Copies of Commissioner Monti’s bio. are available outside so I won’t go into the details of his rather formidable background, but let me just mention some of the higher highlights and you’ll maybe see why he has been described as both “low key” and “Super Mario.” He is from Varese, Italy, just a little bit northwest of Milano, and in addition to a degree in economics and management from Bocconi University there, he did graduate studies at Yale – and we have two of your fellow Yalies running for president this year. Were you a member of Skull and Bones also? No?

MARIO MONTI: I was not really – (off mike). (Laughter.)

MR. HICKMAN: I knew you’d say that.

Commissioner Monti has taught at several Italian universities and was an economic commentator for the very respected Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, which has an office here in Washington – on the fourth floor of this building, as I recall. And since 1999 he has held his present commission with the European Commission. And since my knowledge of anti-trust and competition is nil, I will refrain from any insightful commentary on that field and simply say that our newsmaker’s topic this morning is, as you know, the past, present and future of EU-US anti-trust relations.

And, Anthony, you were saying there was another topic that he would be willing to talk about: Turkey and the Airbus thing and so forth?

Well, after he speaks, Commissioner Monti will take your questions, and please let him know your name and affiliation when you ask them. And when you do have a question, if you’ll give me a signal of some sort I’ll call on you in turn, as many of you as time permits. And finally, if you haven’t already done so, please add your name to the sign-in sheet outside. Thank you very much.

Commissioner Monti.

MARIO MONTI: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be back to the National Press Club. Indeed this will be my last occasion as a member of the European Commission. At the end of this month I will leave my ten-year term, or two five-year terms, with the Commission. What we have done is, I believe, to work to make the European Union economy a bit more similar to the US economy. And secondly, we have tried hard to work with the US in that process.

In the last ten years – this if of course not my own personal record but is the record of the European Union – four fundamental structure reforms have been introduced in the EU, all of them making the EU more similar to the US. Just in ten years, the single market – the single currency, the Euro, enlargement, which is going to be further enlarged following yesterday’s decision of the Commission on Turkey, and the adoption save for the ratification process yet of a new Constitution. All these things, in different ways, in different historical times, the US had given to themselves. Oddly enough, on some of these things the US was very skeptical that the European Union should and might do the same thing. In particular, this was the case where the best of US – and European, for that matter – academia was very skeptical about the possibility to have a single currency and about the fact that having a single currency would not bring an explosion of the European economy.

Now, all these things may have detracted somewhat from the actual economic performance of the European Union over the last several years, but in my view, these four things, taken together, have set the preconditions, also from an economic point of view, for a better performance of the European economy in the medium- to long-term, precisely because it looks now more similar to the structure or fabric of the US economy. But of course Europe cannot be proud of these four achievements, although it should, and sit back and wait for these four structural achievements to bring benefits in terms of actual economic performance. It must work hard to have a better economic performance.

And here comes competition policy, one of the most complete weapons to put in place the so-called Lisbon strategy that is a huge operation to increase the competitiveness of the European economy. And in putting in place competition policy, anti-trust policy, I must say that we, and in particular I, over the last five years, have looked at the US model very, very closely and have worked hard and deep with our American colleagues, because, after all, anti-trust, as such, is an historical heritage of the US. The European Union is a junior member of this venture.

Now, we have, in the course of five years I believe, reinforced European competition policy. It has now clearly a map among the weapons of economic policy in Europe, and European anti-trust is a place on the map of worldwide anti-trust. One feature of the EU system of competition and policy is that it addresses not only the market abusers by companies, be they cartels or abusers of dominance, but also the abusers by governments. And I note an increasing interest in the US for this aspect of EU competition policy, which is not there with any other anti-trust agencies around the world because you have to be a supranational agency to have the power to undo, to criticize, condemn and eventually undo what governments and parliaments did in terms of subsidizing state aid.

By the way, I don’t necessarily want to go into subjects like Boeing and Airbus, but I think the Americans and all the others should keep in the back of their mind the fact that Europe does have a culture, a law and a practice of fighting systematically state aids which are incompatible with our treaty. By the way, this fight is done irrespective of the nationalities of companies. Just one among many, many cases, the European Commission, just a couple of years ago, decided that Deutsche Post, the German postal company, had to give back a huge amount of money to the German state because it had received illegal state aid. And it so happened that the complainant which triggered that action by the European Commission was UPS, not a European company. And I believe that one day we should have, at the global level, more of what only Europe now has; that is, state aid control.

What I leave to my successor, Mrs. Neelie Kroes, who, pending the collective approval of the European Parliament to the Commission, will take the Competition Commissioner post on November 1st, is, I’m confident, a structure which is considerably reinforced in several respects. A number of reforms have been introduced, some of them, indeed, aimed at making the system more similar to the one prevailing in the US, others going further, I believe. For example, beginning May 1 this year, we have in place the so-called modernization of the way in which anti-trust enforcement is conducted in Europe concerning restrictive agreements and abuses of dominant positions. It will no longer be done in a highly centralized way by virtually Brussels alone; it will be done certainly by the European Commission in Brussels, keeping a guardian of the system and of the traffic role but with increased powers of the national competition authorities in a European competition network.

And I am aware that the American anti-trust community and the authorities there are watching with interest our system because, as you may know, the relationship between the two federal anti-trust agencies in the US and the state attorneys general, when they deal with competition matters, is not necessarily an organic and harmonious one.

By the way, we have one competition authority at the level of the European Union. There are two federal authorities for anti-trust in the US. I believe they work harmoniously with each other. They both work harmoniously with you. But certainly Dr. Kissinger’s theorem about the telephone number is reversed here because I have, in my agenda, two telephone numbers for my Washington colleagues. They have just one for Europe. They know whom to call.

And I perhaps would like to conclude my remarks by saying that the state of the transatlantic cooperation in anti-trust has hugely improved over the last few years, and I owe a lot to my numerals because the rotation degree is higher here than on the other side of the Atlantic – colleagues at the top of the DOJ and the FTC. We have established a very healthy working relationship, which has allowed us to conclude in a totally convergent way in hundreds of cases. Of course there have been two not of the smallest cases of divergences: one in the merger area with GE-Honeywell, the other one in the monopolization or abuse of dominance area with Microsoft, even though for Microsoft the domestic degree of divergence in the US has had nothing to envy to the transatlantic divergence there.

But these are the exceptions, which naturally enough capture the attention of the media, but everybody in the worldwide anti-trust community will tell you that this is a remarkable example of success, and I must say that considering the overall transatlantic relations over the last few years, indeed there, too, competition policy stands out as one of the greatest success stories, I believe for two reasons: one, a really common culture of vision on the two sides of the Atlantic where competition policy is there to foster consumer welfare; and second, this is all a European feature, unlike in other areas such as foreign politics, in competition since the foundation of the Union; the Union is able to speak with one voice. And this is of course a plus within Europe but is a plus for the transatlantic cooperation.

And very, very last note, I’m delighted that one little-observed fact has occurred, namely that in the new constitutional treaty, which will be the new Constitution for Europe, the remarkably considerable powers that are granted since the Treaty of Rome in the ‘50s to competition policy and to the European Commission in this area have come out unscathed and, if anything, somewhat reinforced. I think this is, together with internal reforms in the decision-making procedures and the regulations for competition policy, an excellent starting point for my successor, but because constitutions are not, luckily enough, changed every five or six years, for my successors.

Thank you very much for your attention, and I will be delighted to take questions in case there were any.

MR. HICKMAN: Thank you very much, Commissioner Monti. We are open for questions now. Please give your name and affiliation.

Who’s first? Yes, sir.

Q: (Off mike) – Bloomberg. Do you see any possibility of a settlement between the EU and Microsoft at some point – (off mike)?

MR. MONTI: We, as you I’m sure know, worked hard towards a settlement with an open mind and a real determination to achieve a settlement. That did not prove possible. I believe that the time for a settlement has passed. We investigated this case for about five years, and we’re open for settlement discussions, and indeed we held such settlement discussions until a few days before the decision. That turned out not to be possible and it’s now for the courts to decide.

And as my mind goes back to the weeks and very last days in which the settlement discussions took place, I must also recall that this decision which the commission – after the unsatisfactory conclusion the settlement discussions took on the 24th of March – was a decision of course not just by the Competition Directorate General or the Competition Commissioner, it was adopted unanimously by the college of the 20 Commissioners and was endorsed unanimously by the positive recommendation of the national competition authorities of all the member states.

MR. HICKMAN: Next question, in the back.

Q: This morning the US –

MR. HICKMAN: Give your name please.

Q: Greg Rath (ph), CBS MarketWatch. The US has gone ahead and filed a case with the WTO on Airbus subsidies. Could you please comment on that issue?

MR. MONTI: Yes, with the obvious caveat that I’m not the Commissioner competent for this issue – that’s Commissioner Lamy – and also with the caveat that this is not an anti-trust issue. Nevertheless it is an issue on which all efforts have been deployed, in particular by Commissioner Lamy, to handle constructively the case with his US counterpart, Bob Zoellick.

My personal remark at this stage is that we are disappointed. We believe that there is there an attempt to divert attention from Boeing’s self-inflicted decline. Also, I believe this shows that the US were never seriously interested in seeking to renegotiate the existing 1992 EU-US bilateral agreement, and it’s likely – well, the amounts are well known. Since 1992, Boeing received around $20 billion in US subsidies. Moreover, the US government continues to grant Boeing around $200 million per year in export subsidies under the Extraterritorial Income Exclusion Act, the successor to the famous Foreign Sales Corporation legislation, despite the WTO ruling expressly declaring these subsidies illegal. And the latest and most flagrant violation consists in massive subsidies of about $3.2 billion.

So, taking the issue slightly more in perspective, of course it’s of paramount importance for all of us that the WTO is there with the institutional capacity to judge these cases, and I can only note that the European Union has, in recent years, a pretty good record at the WTO, in particular in cases involving the US. Let me just remind the steel case, but let me also underline, this is not – this is a very important issue where the European Union has its own legitimate interests. It is a believer in the value of multilateral dispute settlement, but this is not an anti-trust issue, and in fact, you may have noticed that as Competition Commissioner over the last five years I have worked consistently to dispel at any moment the mere suspicion that in the competition policy decisions, be they on mergers or abuses of dominance or state aid, there could be a bias in relation to the nationality of the companies.

MR. HICKMAN: In the third row. Yes?

Q: (Off mike.) In these two high-profile cases, GE-Honeywell and Microsoft, what’s the solution – (off mike)?

MR. MONTI: Well, on the GE-Honeywell – you’re perfectly right. The laws are different, so the real question is, in my view, how is it possible that in spite of these differences in law, in hundreds of cases it has been possible to arrive at the same conclusion, much to the advantage of the smooth handling of transatlantic transactions by companies? The answer is because there is daily, and nightly sometimes, cooperation between the teams. There is a common economic vision, and we try to coordinate also the timing of the processes. And in – this is a longer-term venture, there have been also some changes in the rules or the practices on both sides of the Atlantic, and those go in the sense of further convergence, not divergence.

Now, in those two cases – well, one remark for GE-Honeywell. Yes, we did come to very different conclusions. Their one facilitating element was lacking, namely the simultaneity in the handling of – in the assessment of the transactions in Washington and Brussels because GE had chosen to invest the European Commission much later than the Justice Department. So there wasn’t really a possibility for a real-time interaction between the two teams besides the fact that the DOJ was at a time of transition towards the appointment of a stable assistant attorney general, which turned out to be Charles James.

For Microsoft I think it’s a different story. When you – and of course, as you know, GE-Honeywell is under the scrutiny of the court in Luxembourg as is Microsoft, so I will certainly not pronounce on what the courts might do. We have confidence in the courts and we defer to them. But Microsoft, when you ask how was it possible to have so divergent conclusions, you should also use the plural concerning the US because you had one approach to Microsoft during the Clinton Administration, during the Clinton Justice Department. You had a different approach to Microsoft during the Bush Administration, and during the Bush Administration you also had different approaches to Microsoft, on one hand by the DOJ in some states; on the other hand by some other states – and all this within, rigorously of course, the context of one and only one legislation.

So, given this, it should not be that puzzling that it was not possible in this case to reach convergence among two different legislations, which indeed, if we compare the monopolization parts of the legislation in the US and Article 82, abuse of dominance in the EU, there are some minor differences. What I want to stress, nevertheless, concerning Microsoft is that even though the conclusions to which the commission arrived, were not welcomed by the Justice Department. Even in the Microsoft case, the consultation between the teams and also between the heads of the two agencies has been intensive, constructive, and in that case not conducive to a unitary result.

But the last thing I will say on Microsoft, after having repeated my deference to, in this case, the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, I can only add that the conduct remedies that we adopted in our March 24 decision are reasonable, balanced and necessary to protect innovation by insuring that competitors, products, be it in the server operating systems or in the media player markets will have a fair opportunity to compete in the marketplace on the merits, and I am confident that the president of the Court of First Instance will rule in favor of competition and consumers in Europe.

MR. HICKMAN: Next question? Yes, sir.

Q: (Off mike.) After the GE-Honeywell decision there was criticism from US academics and officials that there is something wrong with the philosophy of European competition policy, focusing too much on the outcomes and too little on the conditions. You mentioned in the beginning about you actually changing your evolving competition policy, somewhat converging with the US Has there been a change in your rules, regulations, outlook, philosophy which has brought you closer to the US position since then?

MR. MONTI: I would say yes, probably on aspects which were not relevant in the specificities of the GE-Honeywell case. But, yes, there has been a mutual convergence, also facilitated – I’ve not mentioned this so far – by the common work in the ICN, the International Competition Network, which should be registered as a highly positive development over the last three or four years. And frankly, this was set in motion essentially because of the joint efforts of DOJ, FTC and European Commission.

Now, as far as mergers are concerned, there have been some movements from the US side towards the European system – one example: transparency. It used to be the case in the US that when a merger was not challenged by the anti-trust agency, that there was not a published reasoning of the decision not to challenge a merger. For example, if you take the GE-Honeywell case, you find on one side hundreds of pages of the prohibition decision by the Commission on the website, and on the other side, there was no reasoned argument given why the DOJ decided not to challenge the merger.

Important convergences from the US side – sorry, from the EU side. You see, I am so fungible between the two systems by now. Convergences from the EU side in the area of merger control – well, one which goes beyond merger control per se; that is, we have adopted some of the US practices in terms of greater emphasis to economic analysis, and we have introduced the position of the Chief Competition Economist. Procedurally we have enhanced the due process aspects by enhancing the role of the hearing officer by introducing peer review panels internally to the procedure. And in terms of the legislation, the new merger regulation, which went into effect on May 1st, has slightly changed the substantive standard on the basis of which the Commission assesses whether a merger is sound for the competition.

We have not adopted the SLC test, substantial lessening of competition that there is in the US, but we have somewhat broadened the previous EU test, which was creation or strengthening of a dominant position by adopting a notion of significant impediment to effective competition, which for sure will, in most cases, materialize through creation or strengthening of dominance, but may now embrace the so-called unilateral effects in non-collusive oligopolies, as was the case and is the case in the US.

But of all these, frankly, I don’t see much that could have changed the commission’s assessment of GE-Honeywell.

MR. HICKMAN: Yes, sir.

Q: Airbus, as far as I know, has expressed some concern over this – (off mike)? And another question, a personal question: what are your plans for November the 1st?

MR. MONTI: (Unintelligible) – because for November 1st I have rather clear ideas. (Chuckles.) No, Airbus – I’ve been following in the press first the expression of concerns by Airbus in relation to the Commission’s Microsoft decision, and then the withdrawal of that expression of concerns. So before I could understand might ever have been the reasons of the concern, the concern apparently was no longer there.

Much less interesting but also more difficult for me is the answer to your second question. The only certainty is that I will be president of Bocconi University in Milan, and then I will reflect on which, if any, other activities I should be pursuing. One thing I will never abandon: that is, in whatever ways, a very close intellectual and policy interest in the process of European integration to which I’ve devoted, yes, actively ten years of my life, but many more if I go back to the period when, as an academic economist and a participant in policy debates, I had already, with enthusiasm, identified the process of European integration as not only the key driver of integration but the key driver of the transformation of each individual European country towards modernization, towards improvement, and my country, for one, has been, at the same time, one of the key creators of the process of European integration and one of the main beneficiaries, because without that process of European integration, Italy would not in the least be the country that is now in terms of institutional order, of economic strength, although so many things remain to be done.

MR. HICKMAN: Well, you realize in this country we’re focused on November the 2nd a little bit more than November the 1st. (Chuckles.)

MR. MONTI: Well, November the 2nd, at least in the Catholic tradition, is the day in which those who passed away are mourned, so my main objective for November the 2nd is not to be too explicitly included in that list. (Laughter.) November 1st is the day of All Saints. It’s so embracing that I wouldn’t mind being included in that one. (Laughter.)

MR. HICKMAN: Yes, sir.

Q: I apologize for being late. You might have covered this issue already. I wanted to ask you about –

MR. HICKMAN: Can you give your name and affiliation, please?

Q: Oh yes, Caesar Munyon (ph) with – (off mike). I wonder if you can comment on this case brought by the United States against Airbus for unfair competition?

MR. MONTI: Yes, you were a bit late – (laughter) – and I would hate to use two different expressions that might trigger speculations about an evolution of my thoughts in thirty minutes, but I understand there is the text available.

MR. HICKMAN: There is. It’s Federal News Service. Also the club is recording it. It’ll be on the website.

MR. MONTI: But I do appreciate that your question concerned Boeing-Airbus and not the shipbuilding issues of Ivar (ph) –

MR. HICKMAN: Next question.

MR. MONTI: – which I also addressed while you were not here. (Laughter.)

MR. HICKMAN: Though I don’t see any hands moving, Commissioner –

(Cross talk.)

MR. MONTI: Can I make one remark? Well, not all the press representatives here are from the US press but a few are. And I want to underline how much, in my view, the US press, over the last five years, has invested and with so good results in understanding competition – well, the European Union but also competition policy in the European Union, and I believe that now there is a considerably wider, deeper, more serious and really good coverage of these issues. For example, it is now understood that if there are two companies which want to complete a merger and have an important market share in the European Union or important turnover, rather, in the European Union, it’s not outrageous for the European Union competition authorities to pronounce just as exactly the same as for the US authorities over here.

So I’m very grateful to the effort of understanding that even Europe is entitled to have a competition policy. And if I can be brutal, I count very much on the US press to ex-purge from the corpus of what is being written concerning the EU on – (unintelligible) – policy, what is almost systematically written in the editorials of the Wall Street Journal, which is, in most cases, a superficial and provincial outcry of ignorance concerning European anti-trust policy – in my view, inexcusable even in the context of an approach which is held by that newspaper, which broadly considers anti-trust policy as an inherently negative thing, even when it is pursued in the US.

There is a recent example of an editorial – I say “editorial” because the news reporting are, in most cases, factually correct. That is their role. But I am very glad that those outrageous pronouncements appear to be more and more isolated. I remember at the time of GE-Honeywell that I was portrayed under the influence of some of the Wall Street Journal editorials by some of the American press as a paleosocialist while at the same time much of the European press accused me because I was fighting for liberalization and against state aid of being an ultra liberal. Now I see more and more rarely gross and erroneous oversimplifications in the US press, if it is not for the doubtful ivory tower of the Wall Street Journal editorials.

Q: Can I ask you one more thing? (Off mike) – in the US Congress, of which you spoke so highly, the US press – (off mike)?

MR. MONTI: I have had a relationship with the US Congress – I must say, highly respectful, of course, from my side, as that is obvious, but also from the side of the Congress. I had also, thanks to the good offices of our Washington friends here in the delegation, several contacts in particular with the Anti-Trust Subcommittee of the Judicial (sic) Committee with Senators DeWine and Kohl rotating presidencies as if they were member states of the European Union in the Council, and I’ve always found a very respectful understanding of European anti-trust policy with a lot of discretion when it came to individual issues. Sometimes points of view were expressed, and for example I remember – I will not mention the respective sources, but in the case of Microsoft over the years I remember having received the letters and pleas going exactly in the opposite directions from different members of Congress.

I remember also with interest a letter, I think by Senator Rockefeller in the aftermath of GE-Honeywell, pointing to what he perceived as protectionist bias in the decisions by the European Commission in the area of competition, and we took that very seriously by sending him detailed statistics of the negative decisions concerning American and European companies, which brought out very, very clearly that there was no such bias. And I must say that when it came to the Microsoft case, of course the Congress, but also the press, has been very much divided in the US, much of the press siding with the Commission’s decision; others criticizing it, as is perfectly legitimate, and the – but have not seen any resonance of the effect that the commission might have been tougher with Microsoft than the DOJ, Bush administration was, due to European interests.

So this is one of the many aspects in which I’ve seen a remarkable trend of progress in the clarification and understanding of how things are conducted. For my part, I can say that in European Union debates, I spare no efforts to clarify my full conviction that our US colleagues deal with European-based companies just as they would deal with American-based companies, and if there is one principle which unites the growing global anti-trust community, it is the principle of nondiscrimination on the basis of the flags on the companies, which, at any rate, luckily enough, are more and more difficult to identify.

MR. HICKMAN: Yes?

Q: (Off mike.) Now that the Justice Department has decided not to appeal the – (off mike) – Oracle and PeopleSoft, how should that decision, and will that decision – I mean, how will that decision influence or determine the outcome of your review?

MR. MONTI: Well, we expect that – you may remember that in the Oracle-PeopleSoft case, the European Commission stopped the clock, as we say, at a certain point because not all the necessary information were provided to us. We expect that Oracle will very shortly provide the information still pending and that therefore the Commission will be able to restart the clock in the coming days. This should make it possible for the Commission to take a final decision on this case before the end of October. Of course, you will understand that at this stage I cannot yet announce the final content of the decision that the Commission will adopt. Let me simply say that we have examined very carefully the information provided by the different parties, including during the US trial on this case.

MR. HICKMAN: Mr. Commissioner – (off mike) – talk about the prospects of Turkey joining the Union. Could you say something about that?

MR. MONTI: Sure. The European Commission yesterday – or today – today took a very important decision. The decision takes the form of a report to the Council – that is, to the member states – on the beginning of the negotiations for the accession of Turkey. It will then be for the Council to decide on the actual date of the start of the negotiations.

The beginning of the process of negotiation with Turkey marks, of course, another step, a fundamental one, in the process of enlargement of the European Union after the accession of ten Member States last May 1st and after the approach to the accession by Romania and Bulgaria and now also by Croatia.

So you see the configuration of the European Union broadening itself geographically. And of course what is really unique in history – and if you allow me also – different from the westward expansion, enlargement of the United States of America, is that this process, as an economist would put it, has been driven by demand, not by supply. There has been a huge willingness to enter. There has been by no means conquest by the European Union other, perhaps, than through making the European model, which is so much deprecated on occasions internally to the Union, pretty attractive to those who are outside it. Just like the single currency, there isn’t a single episode in history of a currency being adopted by – I mean, countries changing their currency, not simply the denomination of their currency and adopting a common currency, not out of conquest or violence but because of a political choice.

So Turkey of course marks a major step. In so many respects, it’s qualitatively and quantitatively different from the accession of the other member states. It’s perfectly natural if it will take a longer negotiating process, but I believe that it will mark a very, very important change in the relationship between Europe and the Middle East or the Islamic world. And our American friends should not perhaps underestimate the fact that the European Union has been hesitating for a while, and the fact that some portions of the European Union public opinions are a bit hesitating.

I know that once a president of the United States told a president of the European Commission, why don’t you accelerate the accession of Turkey? Look at what we are doing with NAFTA – with Mexico in the context of NAFTA. And so the president of the European Commission: yes, Mr. President, you are right, but please tell me the name of the Mexican senator on Capitol Hill.

And so the fact that – of course in the case of NAFTA and Mexico, you have a huge integration process, which is not dissimilar in some respects from what has been going on commercially in the European Union, and already, for that matter, with Turkey through the Customs Union, which has been there for a long time, but here the transfusion of the new member states into the whole institutions of the European Union gives you the notion that enlargement – this aridly geometrical word – is something very, very intensive in the case of the European Union. And therefore, when we come to a country which has a population – a growth rate of the population, et cetera, et cetera – monumentally different from those of the recent entrance into the Union, it should not be surprising that even though the European Union has fully appreciated the geopolitical importance of this step, it has wanted to reflect twice or three times on the feasibility and on the process to get there.

MR. HICKMAN: Any more questions? If not, Commissioner, thank you, and we wish you luck after November the 1st, and you’re welcome to come back as president of Bocconi University or in any other capacity.

MR. MONTI: Thank you very, very much.

MR. HICKMAN: Don’t forget to sign your name if you haven’t already. Thank you very much.

(END)

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