Friday, December 10, 2010

Who you gonna call? Ashton..Barroso…Van Rompuy…Merkel?

You would be hard pressed to find anyone in Europe who has anything to do with the EU that hasn’t heard this quote:

          "Who do I call if I want to call Europe?"—Henry Kissinger

My education in Europe afforded me the opportunity to meet with many EU officials, interest representation organizations, and academics. I am not exaggerating when I say that almost every person brought up this question posed by Kissinger.

A leaked diplomatic cable available on WikiLeaks and reported on by the EUObserver here, highlights why Europeans have an obsession with this question. In a cable reporting on a meeting between the U.S. and former external relations Commissioner Chris Patten from the UK, Patten states that the EU will never be a real power because it is not willing to unilaterally implement policy that the rest of the world considers unwise, like the U.S.

The Lisbon treaty was Europe’s attempt to solve the Kissinger question. What it accomplished, however, was increased confusion. The treaty created a new Council president, Herman Van Rompuy was chosen for this post, and a High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton holds this post. The treaty did not do away with the rotating Council presidency in which a member state holds this post for six months.

The treaty effectively created more phone numbers to dial when trying to call Europe. The Commission President was a clear supranational leader pre-Lisbon. Now who should the U.S. call? Ashton, Van Rompuy, Barrosso, Belgium (who holds the rotating presidency), or just negotiate bilaterally through member states?

Without a clear foreign policy leader, as is the case with the president in the U.S., the EU will never be a “real” power as Patten describes because member states will negotiate their own foreign policies. When you want to negotiate with the United States, it is clear who to contact. It is unnecessary to contact all branches of the government or individual states. When you want to negotiate with Europe, why go through the hassle of figuring out who to call, when you can just dial the individual member states whose leaders are clear.

Many have been quick to criticize the appointment of Van Rompuy as a “straw man” who can be controlled by the member states. In a recent rant by Member of Parliament Nigel Farage, he stated Van Rompuy has the “charisma of a damp rag” and “the appearance of a low-grade bank clear.” While this is an overstatement, he clearly isn’t a charismatic figure who is willing to further a European foreign policy agenda, Farage, a Euroskeptic should appreciate this.

It comes down to the fact that to pass foreign policy legislation, voting in the Council requires unanimity. This is something that has not changed with the Lisbon treaty. Lisbon moved many Justice and Home affairs issues to the “community method”( which only requires a qualified majority in the Council) and extended the Parliament the power of codecision in all areas but foreign policy. Extended codecision has made the legislative process similar to a bicameral legislature. While this is a large generalization the Council now operates like the Senate and Parliament as the House of Representatives.

Lisbon also created the European External Action Service (EEAS), a diplomatic corps to serve European goals. Ashton will be in charge of this new service. How the EEAS will look is still not clear. They are set to move into their new headquarters in Brussels shortly.

Will we see European delegations replace those of the member states? I don’t imagine this will happen anytime soon. But, if I were a German or UK citizen in these tough economic times, I wouldn’t mind seeing my embassy in Ulaanbaatar shut down in lieu of an EEAS office that would handle the affairs of all Europeans. Currently an EU citizen can use the services of another member state (an Estonian can use a German consulate) in countries where they have no diplomatic presence. This offsets huge costs for small member states like Malta and Estonia, who just can’t afford to have the world wide diplomatic presence that the UK and Germany have.

There is no doubt that there would be benefits if the EU could establish an effective foreign policy. This is most evident in the WTO where it negotiates as a single entity making it an extremely powerful player because of the bloc’s combined trade. The EEAS can also help to offset the large cost of maintaining a global diplomatic presence for both large and small member states. Will foreign policy ever fall under the community method? This is hard to say, but before this happens, fiscal union is needed to save the bloc first.

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