Global Europe

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.” 

In their view, the British government has committed several anti-EU “crimes”, such as staying clear of Schengen, keeping out of the Euro, emasculating ESDP and sidestepping a referendum on Lisbon. Foisting the unknown Labour peer unto the EU was only the last act of anti-integration sabotage. But ask most British Conservatives and they will argue that the Labour government is inherently, indeed pathologically, pro-European – to the detriment, Tories believe, of Britain’s national interests.  

In the middle of these two perspectives stands Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband. If Gordon Brown's symbolic snub in arriving late to sign the EU Reform Treaty fed a sense around Europe's capitals that the Prime Minister wanted a semi-detached Europe policy, the appointment of the then-Environment Secretary was seen by many as a pro-European antidote. The son of a distinguished socialist intellectual, Britain’s second youngest Foreign Secretary’s family history is rooted in Europe. His grandfather was a Warsaw Jew; his father a Belgian-born émigré who married his Polish sweetheart.

In his two years as the nation’s top diplomat, Miliband has lived up to this history. Britain’s foreign policy has become far more pro-European than at any time since the 1970s. Just look at Pakistan policy. For years Britain sought to avoid an EU role in Pakistan’s stabilisation almost at all costs. But in the last two years, the British diplomats in Brussels have worked hard to get the EU engaged, pushing for a high-level summit in 2009 and looking for ways to expand EU assistance programmes.  

And in the Balkans, British policy is now to work through and leverage the EU rather than to assume that bilateral power alone will work. And even on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the British government has been willing to go along with an EU majority, for example in laying out a position on the status of Jerusalem, as advocated by the Swedish EU Presidency. One European foreign minister told me that he thought Miliband was one of the “consistently pro-European voices” at the regular foreign ministers’ meetings. Unsurprisingly, Miliband quickly emerged as the favourite to become EU High Representative.

Not only is Miliband happy to promote pro-EU policies; he has given probably the most coherent justification for a pro-EU stance articulated by any British minister. At the think-tank IISS, he argued that the world will either be run by a G2 of China and the US, or by a G3 that includes the EU. Britain had to bandy together with other EU states, or embrace decline and irrelevance.  

Part of Miliband’s pro-EU stance has undoubtedly been political, not policy-driven. As he told the Fabian Review in 2007: "Europe is seen as a tactical problem for us but it's a strategic problem for the Tories.” He went on to say: “Our position on Europe is a strategic advantage for us even if there are tactical challenges that arise and that's because once you accept that climate change, migration, terrorism, are big sources of insecurity, you have to find international ways of dealing with them. You can't tackle climate change if you're a Eurosceptic.”  

Whether this electoral strategy will work out remains to be seen, but the odds are not good. Britons are more skeptical of the benefits of EU membership than any other Europeans. Tony Blair is said to count among his failures his inability to create a more pro-European public. And if the Conservatives win power, with a new generation of anti-European MPs on their benches, the mood will not change. But surveys also suggest that Britons are not the anti-Europeans of continental caricature either. Though 23% of Britons say they trust the EU (less than half the EU average) the EU is more trusted than political parties (9%), the British government (19%) and Parliament (19%).

The other question is whether the foreign secretary’s pro-EU views have helped shape the EU’s broader agenda, rather than simply get the bloc engaged in British priority issues. For all the flack Blair receives on the continent, his ten years in No 10 were marked by a number of EU policies that would probably not have come about without British promotion. These include the Lisbon Agenda, CAP reform, the idea of Turkish accession and even ESDP.  

As Blair’s long-time policy adviser, and founder of the Centre for European Reform, a think tank, Miliband probably played a part in developing some or all of these ideas. But should he be forced to vacate his King Charles Street office after the next election, Miliband’s own EU legacy is harder to spot. That may not be entirely his fault. Gordon Brown’s own EU position took a while and an earth-shattering recession to emerge. When it did, the EU was mired in a dual economic and institutional crisis, as it awaited the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. Any British initiatives were likely to come from No 10 or the Treasury, rather than the Foreign Office – while the EU itself was hardly ready for a non-economic reform agenda in this period.

Britain is not the anti-EU ogre of European nightmares, but its government -- whatever political hue it may have -- will never be a continental-style integration enthusiast. In David Miliband, however, Britain may have its most pro-European foreign secretary and the EU its best British friend for a long time.