ROTTERDAM, 12/01/07 - Outgoing secretary-general of the economic affairs ministry Jan Willem Oosterwijk has urged a strengthening of the internal market in the EU. He would also be pleased if clusters of member states worked more closely together.

In the economists' journal ESB, Oosterwijk writes that the EU must achieve vital changes more quickly. He wants a new European treaty that ensures easier decision-making, with fewer vetoes and with different voting ratios, in order to more easily form "winning coalitions." These could consist of leading groups of member states.

Oosterwijk differentiates three regions. Southern Europe forms, economically viewed, an European rearguard. The second region is continental Europe with the French-German axis as pivot, the "sputtering economic engine of Europe." The third region, in the north-west, forms the economic vanguard and the Netherlands also belongs to this.

Oosterwijk urges abolition of the veto for the EU's multi-year budget. This should make it easier to convert "old" policy into policy with more emphasis on research and innovation. For example, he considers agricultural policy still makes far too big a claim on the European budget.

The adaptive power of the EU is too much determined by the countries that are slowest with reforms, in Oosterwijk's view. A part of the member states should therefore be able to work together more closely. As an example, he referred to the initiative to create a Northwest European energy market.