The European Treaty and the EU-Africa summit are still hot issues on the table, as Italy alerts to the summer reality of forest fires in Mediterranean countries and asks for EU debate and intervention.

The Portuguese Foreign Minister Luís Amado took the priorities of the Portuguese EU Presidency (among which we can find an EU-African Union summit and the purpose to achieve an agreement on the European Treaty issue) to Paris last Tuesday, for presentation at the annual conference of French diplomats. At the same time, Italian authorities showed some sensitivity as they conveyed the strong will to discuss forest summer fires, considered an urgent matter especially for the southern populations in the Union, as well as the urgent need of a “European strategy” to deal with them in the Mediterranean region.

After the Paris meeting with the French diplomats, Amado travelled to London for a dinner meeting with the British counterpart David Miliband. London's aversion to the participation of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at the planned II Europe-Africa summit in Lisbon was surely a conversation topic between them. Having organized the first EU-Africa summit in Cairo during its last EU Presidency, Portugal has declared this II summit one of the top priorities of its actual Presidency agenda.

However, Lisbon's attempts to host a follow-up summit in 2003 were aborted by London's refusal to overlook EU travel sanctions against Mugabe for his disrespect for human and civil rights in Zimbabwe. In spite of this controversy, Amado’s team wants to prepare the II summit for December, search for a “diplomatic solution” (many African countries at the summit have good relations with Mugabe, fact which shouldn’t hide his disrespect for human rights…) and find a consensual answer which allows it to move forward.

The Italian Minister of Environment, Pecoraro Scanio, wants to debate the issue of forest summer fires in EU Mediterranean countries at an informal meeting with his counterparts from the 27 EU countries, to be held in Lisbon this Friday and Saturday, and has sent a letter manifesting that wish to the European Commissary Stravos Dimas. This informal meeting of the Environment Ministers was originally prepared to debate a report on the scarcity of water and drought in Europe.

According to that report, over the last 30 years the drought periods have increased to affect progressively more European regions. Pecoraro asked in his letter to the Commissary for a report on the forest fires to be presented as well, since Italy finds important that the EU intervenes and tries to solve and prevent such human-caused environmental crimes or calamities inside its borders, in the future.

Meanwhile, the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner announced Monday that a priority of the upcoming French EU Presidency, set to begin July 1st 2008, will be the launching of discussions on the creation of a European Union diplomatic service.