Global Europe

This weekend, the ‘advanced status’ of partnership between the EU and Morocco is about to undergo its first major overhaul. The first EU-Morocco summit in Granada on 6-7 March aims to put some flesh on the skinny frame of the statut avancé. Granted to Morocco by the EU in October 2008 via the adoption of a sort of generally formulated roadmap, the new status foresees a substantial intensification of bilateral diplomatic and trade relations between the EU and Morocco. 

In his recent speech at the College of Europe, Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, likened the EU to a convoy of 27 ships, each flying both the national and the EU flag. If the image is apt, some Member States’ ship seems to be a submarine though, for it is not always evident that all Member States are part of the European convoy. Even a submarine is useful however, provided that it does not go off on its own initiative, but acts in coordination with the rest of the fleet, coordination to be provided by the Admiral – or President.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General, is currently working on a new strategic concept for the alliance, to be issued in September. Recently former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has put the question of the future of NATO in the following way: “How does an alliance that unifies peoples and values under a common defense, created to defend against a threat that no longer exists, find relevance against a whole new set of threats?” Global Europe has put Albright's question to a number of leading European experts on EU foreign and security policy. Here are the responses.

After exhaustive debates and speculation amongst policy experts on its practicality, Nord Stream – the gas pipeline running through the Baltic Sea connecting Russia and Germany – is steaming ahead. The Russo-German project, likened by Radoslaw Sikorski to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, has finally cleared its last regulatory hurdle with the Finnish environmental agency granting its approval. While environmental organizations such as WWF have filed a legal challenge against the pipeline, the €7.5 billion project is still expected to start construction already in April with a view to sending its first gas supplies in 2011.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates each delivered forceful speeches on Euro-Atlantic security in Washington last week. The mainstream media focused on the critical elements, particularly when Gates castigated European allies for not spending more on defense. Yet Europeans may have become so accustomed to turning a deaf ear to such American entreaties that they may not have heard other messages, particularly one expressed clearly and succinctly by Clinton: 

In the lead up to the March 7 parliamentary elections in Iraq, the received wisdom in the United States and Europe is that the country is on an upward trajectory. In his recent State of the Union address, Barack Obama announced that he had delivered upon his campaign promise to end the war in Iraq and bring soldiers home. Such pronouncements of ‘mission accomplished’ may yet come back to haunt Obama in the same way they did his predecessor. Henry Kissinger has recently chastised Obama for failing to give due attention to the crucial US interest in securing a ‘political and strategic equilibrium between Iran and Iraq’, ensuring that Tehran does not dominate its neighbour and fundamentally alter the balance of power in the region. However, if Obama has been caught napping on Iraq, then the EU can only be described as suffering from narcolepsy.

Throughout much of January and February, the BBC has been running a documentary series about the Royal Navy called Empire of the Seas. The programmes show how the navy led to the development of the British fiscal-military system, leading to the formation of the Bank of England and the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The documentary also charts how these national institutions were then harnessed by the British government to project power across the world, allowing London to acquire the lion’s share of global trade and amass the largest empire in world history.

Unsurprisingly, President Obama’s decision not to attend the EU-US summit has engendered much debate in Spain. Commentators and politicians have been quick to chalk up this decision as another black mark for what seems to be an increasingly hapless and accident-prone Spanish presidency. Add this to the government’s badly prepared pontifications on ‘corrective measures’ being introduced into the EU’s putative 2020 economic strategy, the shameful in-fighting over who should lead the response to Haiti’s earthquake and foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos’ apparently unilateral suggestion that the arms embargo on China should be removed, and a sense of baleful drift now permeates a seemingly ill-starred presidency. 

When the Orange revolution took place in the autumn of 2004, the EU’s role in turning it into a success benefited hugely from the fact that it had just enlarged to ten new members and that Poland, the largest newcomer, was able to act as facilitator with both sides of the divide in Ukrainian politics. Those days are now a distant memory but the legend of the Orange revolution may be stronger in Warsaw than in Kiev. Poland sees the transformation of the Eastern neighbourhood as its mission in life in foreign policy. Its basic message is that if the EU wants to become a global actor, it needs to start with the fundamentals and a stable and prosperous neighbourhood is a must for that.

Across Europe, the perceived early failures of High Representative Catherine Ashton are blamed squarely on Britain’s Foreign Office. They, not her, are in charge and, according to the story line, are out to undermine the European project. Several MEPs and a number of French bloggers have expressed this loudly, seemingly taking cue from the Marquis of Ximenez, whose 1793 poem admonished readers “attaquons dans ses eaux la perfide Albion.”