It is a commonplace to note, and lament, the abyss between the EU’s economic power and its political power. With 500 million people and 22 percent of gross world product, it might expect to be listened to. But the EU’s self-esteem has been at a nadir since Obama stayed away from a planned EU summit to be hosted by Spain, saying that visiting Europe once a year was more than enough.
Things are no better with Russia and China : both countries have found it easier to deal with individual states while ignoring Brussels. And in the UN, the EU has not only failed where it felt itself most capable (e.g. the climate change talks), but every day fewer countries vote with the Europeans on issues of democracy and human rights. There is, however, some justification for indifferent relations with the major powers. Firstly, the EU is not even a state, so that to presume to play in the big leagues is not a realistic objective. Besides, Washington, Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi are tough nuts to crack. The United States is a hyperpower (too big) ; Russia a superpower in decline (too nervous) ; China an apprentice superpower (too prudent) ; and India only a regional actor (too introverted).
It is less justifiable, however, that the EU seems unable to deal with other emerging countries whose political and economic models are not too far removed : Brazil, Turkey and South Africa — each one with its particularities (Sarko-Berlusconian Europe, as we have just seen, has its particularities too) — are democracies and market economies. Yet when it comes to talking to Brasilia, Ankara and Pretoria, the EU appears as an awkward, unattractive actor that arouses more wariness than curiosity. Indeed, to watch Lula, Erdogan and Zuma taking their first toddling steps in the practice of ignoring Brussels has, in many European capitals, been the last straw for European strategic (im)patience.
In these circumstances, European leaders at last seem to have got down to work, because, on the initiative of the first permanent president, the Belgian Van Rompuy, they have met for the first time to discuss EU foreign relations from a “strategic” viewpoint — that is, with the intention of identifying problems, defining priorities, and considering what countries the EU can rely on in this multipolar world.
As opposed to the dominant tradition in European Council meetings (that of generating a litany of insipid conclusions), it seems that at last we have a summit devoted to substantive issues. This is good news, coinciding with the deployment of the European External Action Service which has just designated its first 27 ambassadors. Even the European Parliament is stirring and wishes to imitate the US Senate in vetting these ambassadors, obliging them to appear before its Foreign Relations Committee to explain their priorities.
This is a daydream, but we should not speak too soon. To close the gap between economic and political power is not easy, especially in a system where power remains fragmented into different institutions and levels.
Indeed, observing EU foreign policy design, one wonders whether we have progressed in the 2,500 years since each of the ten Athenian tribes elected a strategos, who sat in a council presided by an archon.
Snide tongues say that, given the waning real weight of Europe in relative economic and demographic terms, the problem of the disparity will be solved when this real weight declines to something like the feebleness of EU foreign policy. Hence the paradox in this special European Council meeting : just when we are beginning to think of coordinated foreign policy action and a European place on the world stage, it is on our internal European problems – economic stagnation, demographic decline, social policy regression and the rise of xenophobia – that we are being judged.
