Tuesday 20 January 2009

European Union to deepen its relations with Andorra and San Marino

If I read the agenda of this Wednesday's COREPER meeting (part 1) correctly, the Council of the European Union is going to authorise the Commission to extend the scope of the relations between the EU and the two mini-countries Andorra and San Marino.

I cannot find the respective documents, and they don't seem to be public because they are marked RESTRAINT UE (which, according to a Council decision from 2001 means: "This classification shall be applied to information and material the unauthorised disclosure of which could be disadvantageous to the interests of the European Union or of one or more of its member states.").

I suppose that this will largely be with regard to economic relations - but I will come back to this issue as soon as the documents are made public.

2 comments:

  said...

Well, both in Andorra and in San Marino, the social democrats are in favour of EU accession; while in San Marino, they just lost the election, Andorra will have one this year and the social democrats might finally win for the first time in quite a while, so perhaps there's something coming...?

Antal Dániel said...

I think some EU-sceptics will cite this piece of news that the EU is lost in a myriad of regional and historical issues, but I think it is not unimportant. A better economic or even political integration of Andorra, San Marino and Lichtenstein could have a disproportionately high prize for the EU public finances and economic infrastructure, as these tiny sovereignties have long frustrated our tax policies, for instance.