Europe’s phone numbers. In the IHT, Roger Cohen tells a joke:
President Obama learns with interest that Europe now has a phone number. He’s told that, responding at last to Henry Kissinger’s famous jibe, the European Union has appointed a President named Herman Van Rompuy from Belgium and given him a 24/7 phone line.
So, Obama decides to try out Europe’s phone number. Henry will be tickled. But the president forgets about the time difference and gets an answering machine: “Good Evening, you’ve reached the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy speaking. We are closed for tonight. Please select from the following options. Press one for the French view, two for the German view, three for the British view, four for the Polish view, five for the Italian view, six for the Romanian view. …”
Obama hangs up in dismay.
This self-deprecating little story was told by the Finnish foreign minister, Alexander Stubb, during a meeting last week on NATO’s future.
Emerging consensus: Lisbon treaty made things worse. William Underhill writes on Newsweeks “Wealth of Nations” blog:
When the EU’s Lisbon Treaty finally took effect last year, the bloc’s leaders hailed the start of a new era. For the first time, the 27-nation union–representing 450 million people and a third of the world economy–could look forward to matching international clout. The pact gave Europe not just a streamlined decision-making system, but also a permanent president and a de facto foreign minister to serve as its global champions.
Yet 100 days on, Europe’s voice sounds as quiet as ever on the world stage. Both the new European Council president, former Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy, and the new high representative for foreign affairs, Britain’s Catherine Ashton, have confirmed their earlier reputations as lackluster performers better at quiet diplomacy than international image boosting. The talk still is of a new global order dominated by the “G2″ of China and the U.S.
The Brussels hierarchy has been confused, not clarified, by the Lisbon Treaty. Europe now boasts separate presidents of the European Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament (not to mention the six-monthly rotating EU presidency). But blame for a leadership deficit belongs to member states as much as to the new figureheads. Van Rompuy and Ashton were compromise candidates selected partly because of their unthreatening obscurity rather than their merits.
Whatever their fine words over Lisbon, the bloc’s big hitters remain reluctant to cede any real authority to Brussels. As so often in the EU, national interests trump collective ones.
The simple truth is that the Lisbon Treaty can’t re-create the EU as a superpower. Says Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank: “It is not personality that denotes power: it is money, guns, political will, and diplomatic influence. When the EU can deploy those efficiently, then other countries will sit up and listen.”
Turf war over EAS. In a backgrounder, the Irish Times’ Arthur Beesley says that the EU foreign ministers meeting in Cordoba “gave Catherine Ashton a strong mandate for her new position”:
EU governments are vying with the European Commission and MEPs for influence over the new body, to be known as the European External Action Service (EAS). In the middle stands Baroness Ashton, roiled this way and that as she strives to shape a big new European institution while seeking to establish her voice in global affairs. It is a daunting task. (…)
“Everyone is playing their games – I mean that’s hardly surprising,” Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, told reporters in Cordoba. (…)
Conscious that the EAS has the potential to become a major player in global affairs – that is the intention in Brussels, after all – member states are keen to maximise their leverage over the new body. This applies equally to governments who have high ambition for the service and those who would much prefer to limit its reach. All are confronted, however, with the commission’s reluctance to cede too many powers. (…)
As Baroness Ashton prepares to make public her plans next month, Brussels is in a fever of politicking. Whether she can bring all sides together will be a key test of her clout. Crucially, however, a succession of ministers backed her in the tussle with the commission by asserting their primacy over foreign affairs.
Does Germany have a security policy? In an essay for Internationale Politik, the GMF’s Constanze Stelzenmüller is discussing “the core questions of German security policy”:
Does Germany actually have a security policy worthy of the name? If so, is this policy actually based on a strategy? How effective are the actors and institutions that shape and implement such policy? Do Germany’s alliance policies bear inspection? Finally, how good are the tools at its disposal?
Bottom line: German security policy falls (far) short of what it should and could achieve.
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