Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt vowed that Sweden will rise up to the tough challenges as it takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union (EU) on Wednesday amid the global economic crisis.

"The circumstances of our presidency are special. There are many challenges, and they are far from simple," Reinfeldt told the parliament last week.

One of the big challenges for the Swedish EU presidency is to pull Europe out of the current economic crisis as soon as possible.

Europe and the rest of the world are in the midst of "the most serious economic crisis of modern times," said Reinfeldt, adding that "we are experiencing declining growth and trade, and increasing bankruptcy and unemployment."

As the current economic crisis was caused by a financial turmoil resulted from ineffective international financial supervision, the EU has vowed to "restore confidence in the financial markets" by establishing "a European body to supervise stability" as well as "lay the foundations for a new growth and employment strategy" to help millions of unemployed Europeans.

EU leaders clinched a framework deal two weeks ago to introduce a new system of pan-European financial supervision to prevent recurrence of similar crisis. The deal is expected to be completed in the second half of this year.

While most EU countries support more effective Pan-European financial supervision, Britain is reluctant to leave the supervision of its financial sector to the EU. Some analysts are also sceptical about EU's ability to establish a mechanism of effective financial supervision across Europe this year.

Another big challenge for Sweden's EU presidency is tackling the global climate change.

"Together with the financial crisis, climate change is therefore the Swedish presidency's most important priority. There is no time to lose if we don't want our children to experience drastically worse living conditions than we do," the Swedish prime minister said.

He expressed the hope that an international climate agreement could be concluded at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December.

The EU members, however, still need to agree on the key issue for the new international climate deal, the funding for the developing countries. At the latest summit in Brussels, EU leaders set Oct. 30 as the deadline to decide how the bloc should share the bill for combating climate change in poor states.

Europe will also face other challenges, for example, the consequences of a second Irish referendum on the EU reform treaty in early October. Another Irish veto would have devastating consequences.

Addressing the Swedish parliament, Reinfeldt vowed that his country will lead the EU to meet the challenges in an open, efficient and result-oriented manner in the coming six months.

"We are able to gather the EU together to respond to the challenges that people care about and where strong European cooperation can make a difference," he said.

Source: Xinhua