EU Members Gather in Portugal for Summit

Disputes over sanctions against Austria and ways to stop tax evasion overshadowed the European Union’s reform agenda as the 15 leaders converged on Portugal on Sunday for their regular mid-year summit. The two-day meeting, opening today in Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal, is supposed to set the agenda for negotiations to prepare the EU’s creaking institutions to receive another dozen member states over the next decade. The leaders also will appoint a panel to propose ways of regulating the EU single market in financial services, officials said. But with final decisions on institutional reform not due until December, attention has switched to differences over a diplomatic boycott of Austria and a 2-year-old dispute over how to tax cross-border savings income. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, who will chair the summit, pledged to try to help Austria out of its diplomatic isolation provided it keeps the issue off the EU agenda and out of media headlines this week. Austria’s 14 EU partners froze high-level bilateral contacts with Vienna in February when far-right crusader Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party entered government. Guterres said he would try to “open a door” to easing the boycott, which some analysts argue has done the 14 more harm than Austria, by the end of June.