Europe risking irrelevance as world moves on

TONY BARBER

In international politics there are four or five leopards, snakes of various kinds, a handful of monkeys, and ants all over the jungle floor. The European Union seems intent on sticking out from the crowd - a genial, hydra-headed monster.

The recent appointments of Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium’s prime minister, as the EU’s first full-time president, and of Britain’s Baroness Catherine Ashton as its foreign policy chief, leave the EU’s global role and image in the hands of two personalities with next to no experience of high-level international affairs. They are choices which appear to contradict the arguments that EU leaders have made for years about the importance of projecting Europe’s collective influence more effectively around the world.

In the case of Lady Ashton, it was a last-minute choice prompted by considerations of political balance within the 27-nation EU. Until 5 p.m. Brussels time last Thursday, she had no idea she would be picked. She was awarded the job primarily because the UK needed a payback for sacrificing the presidential ambitions of Tony Blair, the former prime minister, and because she won approval from Europe’s socialist parties, which had demanded the foreign policy post for a member of their political family.

Example

None of this means that Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton lack talent. As Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, remarked: “I am one of those people who believe that characters can grow into jobs.” Ms Merkel is a good example - a Lutheran pastor’s daughter who spent her formative years in obscurity in communist East Germany and now governs Europe’s biggest country.

But the appointments suggest Europe is not adapting fast enough to profound changes in the international order that are remorselessly eroding its influence. Europe is not blind to the problem - far from it. When Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, presented his policy guidelines in September for the next Commission, he had this to say:

“For Europe, this is a moment of truth. Europe has to answer a decisive question. Do we want to lead, shaping globalisation on the basis of our values and our interests - or will we leave the initiative to others and accept an outcome shaped by them? The alternatives are clear. A stark choice has to be made. Either Europeans accept to face this challenge together - or else we slide towards irrelevance.”

The European historical diagnosis goes as follows. Between 1500 and 1900 a rising Europe dominated the world, with Spain, Britain and France acquiring large overseas empires.

The two world wars destroyed Europe’s supremacy, splitting it between a US-led west and a Soviet-controlled east. The wars exposed the lethal potential of European nationalism and paved the way for the experiment in pooling sovereignty represented by the European Union.

Opportunity

In 1989, the collapse of communism provided an unmissable opportunity to bury Europe’s divisions forever. But now globalisation is pushing the world into an age of unsentimental Great Power politics, in which Europe must get its act together to avoid being pushed to the sidelines by Brazil, China, India, Russia, the US and so on.

The EU’s remedy is the Lisbon treaty, a set of reforms intended to strengthen its cohesion and upgrade its global influence. Among the treaty’s main features are the creation of the full-time presidency, to replace the increasingly ineffective system of six-month rotating presidencies shared among the EU’s member-states, and the appointment of a foreign policy supremo with stronger powers than those enjoyed by Javier Solana, the post’s occupant since 1999.

As discussions of these arrangements proceeded, it became clear most governments preferred a low-profile, consensus-building chairman as president rather than a forceful, policy-setting chief executive. This preference has now been expressed in the choice of Van Rompuy instead of Blair.

But it hardly seems possible that Van Rompuy will parley on equal terms with the likes of Barack Obama and Hu Jintao, the US and Chinese presidents. Not only is his experience too limited, not only are the frames of reference for his job too narrowly drawn, but also he will have to share the stage with Barroso and Lady Ashton. As for Lady Ashton, she will in principle be in a more powerful position. She will control a multi-billion euro budget and a staff of several thousand people across the world. According to the Lisbon treaty, she will “conduct the Union’s common foreign and security policy”.

But with her job comes the title of Commission vice-president. In this sense, there will be occasions on which she will defer to Barroso. Furthermore, the Lisbon treaty’s job description conceals the fact that foreign policy will remain a matter for unanimity among the 27 governments. In an organisation as addicted as the EU to compromise, bargaining and sophisticated balances of power, it is never easy to pick winners and losers after an event such as the recent summit.

Choices

Some will pinpoint Barroso as the most powerful of the EU’s new trio of leaders. Some will advise not to underestimate Lady Ashton and the institutional weight behind her.

But perhaps the real winners are the EU’s governments and the cross-national, centre-right and centre-left political party groups that dominate the European parliament.

National leaders have elected to pick two new EU-level office-holders who will not overshadow them. Their choices were heavily influenced by the demands of the party groups. The rest of the world is unlikely to miss the message.

(FT)