The Seville Council: uninspiring yet useful?

The Seville Council has had a somewhat mixed reception. True to form, The Economist derided it as “a non-event”, and described it as being “among the sleepiest” EU summits in living memory. Other observers, however, claimed genuine progress had been made in the three areas which dominated the Seville agenda, namely immigration, enlargement, and institutional reform. In Spain itself, the socialist and communist opposition parties, which had assisted the trade unions in staging the first general strike endured by José María Aznar since coming to office in 1996 on the eve of the summit, were quick to read its shortcomings as evidence of his growing isolation and loss of influence in Europe. As expected, this did not prevent the Spanish prime minister from informing the European Parliament that he was “reasonably satisfied” with the outcome of the Seville Council and of the Spanish presidency as a whole.