Eerste webcast van Raad van Ministers blijkt saai (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Endless jargon translated by monotonous interpreters characterised most of Tuesday's first ever web-streamed EU ministers' meetings.

The meeting on Tuesday (11 July) was the the first to be broadcast live on the internet, after EU leaders last month decided to inject more transparency in the meetings of the EU council - the member states' decision-making body.

But few of those citizens taking a peek into minister's discussions probably sat out the full length of the one and a half hour finance ministers' gathering.

Web-viewers saw the finance ministers casually call each other by their forenames such as Eero, Par and Gerrit.

But they are likely to have been made dizzy by the swirl of EU jargon dominating the meeting like "multilateral surveillance" or "second assessment reports" and "horizontal items."

Cameras were switched on only for the two least sensitive items on the ministers' agenda - a discussion on the economic and financial work programme of the fresh Finnish EU presidency, followed by a debate on the mandate of the European Investment Bank (EIB).

But just before ministers were to tackle the much more thorny topic of the EU's stability and growth pact - the rules underpinning the euro - Finnish finance minister Eero Heinaluoma announced "I now end the public session of this council."

Dutch finance minister Gerrit Zalm told reporters after the meeting that the webcast topics were "not attractive enough" to get people interested.

He said that if the aim of the scheme was to make citizens interested in the EU, "a couple of nice topics" needed to be identified for future open sessions.

"Nobody will watch these kind of debates unless it gets really exciting," he said, while adding that the interesting discussions on the euro pact would stay behind closed doors.

But if Tuesday's transparency kick-off did not do much to bring Brussels closer to ordinary folk, it did give professional Brussels-watchers an inside glimpse of political controversy surrounding some policy dossiers.

Latvia and Lithuania made clear they dislike Finland's ambition to raise the EU minimum excise duty rates on alcohol, but Sweden backed the Finns with its finance minister Par Nuder saying "alcohol consumption is one of the most important public health concerns."

And Mr Zalm also did his best in making discussions more colourful, criticising the European Commission in a straightforward Dutch fashion on its plans for EIB funds.

He characterised Brussels' proposals to channel more EIB cash to countries outside Europe as "not sensible," disliking the "double digits or triple digits for Latin America."

Mr Zalm reassured reporters after the meeting that he had "not taken into account" that the meeting was filmed when he slammed Brussels over its EIB plans.

Meanwhile viewers could see a much different position from Spain. "I disagree with Gerrit," said Spanish minister Pedro Solbes arguing that the EIB loans to Latin America were to the benefit of EU companies.

EU leaders last month decided that as a rule, only meetings under the so-called "co-decision procedure" - where the European Parliament has a full say alongside member states - will be opened.

The council can in individual cases also decide to open meetings which are not under the co-decision procedure, with the Finnish presidency vowing to use its legal possibilities to boost transparency to the full.