Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Europe: too many leaders and too little leadership

No wonder the Americans think of the European Union as just a toothless gang of wimps

Adrian Hamilton
Saturday 17 August 2002 00:00 BST
Comments

It is usual for politicians to talk of war when they want to divert attention from domestic troubles. It's less often that they talk of refusing war. The sight of the two contenders for next summer's German elections, Gerhard Schröder and Edmund Stoiber, outdoing each other this week in their rejection of US talk of an invasion of Iraq is extraordinary.

Of course it's a diversion from the more pressing problem of these elections – how to get the German economy on the move again and reduce the 4 million unemployed in the country. But the fact that Schröder can see votes in his declaration that Germany would refuse to participate in an attack on Iraq and Stoiber can feel it necessary to try to outflank him is a sure sign of how heavily the question preys on public opinion.

Foreign affairs do move people. The reaction tends to be on single issues, rather than the general – what to do about Robert Mugabe rather than how the European Union should enlarge. It tends to the pacific, or soft-centered if you prefer. Viewers respond to pictures of famine or people driven from their homes more readily than to more abstract questions.

But the interesting point is that international affairs are one of those few areas where public opinion tends to be Europe-wide rather than nation-based. In looking at how to respond to US policy on the environment or on war, or what to do about Aids in Africa, there is an instinctive feeling that Europe needs a united front if it is to be effective. Tony Blair has done himself a huge amount of harm in Europe by appearing so willing to go along with America over Iraq precisely because this weakens the chance of a common European front, not because people object to him having his own views.

The failure of European politics has been to convert this desire for common stances into a common voice. The problem lies partly in the Commission. Although an EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy has been appointed in the person of Xavier Solana, a former Nato Secretary-General, the lines of division were never made clear with the Commissioner for External Affairs, Chris Patten, or, indeed, with the President of Commission, Romano Prodi, traditionally the common foreign affairs voice of Europe.

The result has been a muddle in which neither outside countries nor the public has any real idea of who speaks for what. Solana has done his best, but he is an old institutional player from Nato – hardly the best training ground for developing a voice of individual conviction. Romano Prodi, a subtle politician used to twisting his way through the labyrinths of traditional Italian politics, has been too bogged down in the internal problems of the Commission to act the representative of Europe. When he speaks, as on structural reform, it is as a propagator of the Commission's corporate interests, not the wider public's.

Chris Patten, meanwhile, has turned out to be a disappointment. Like Neil Kinnock, the vice-president of the Commission, he is good with the press (particularly the British press), but poor in managing an international bureaucracy. Early on, Patten made a fatal error in allowing trade to be separated from foreign affairs. Although he has of late tried to speak up a little in criticism of America, he is by now seen, within and without, largely as a busted flush.

Yet even if things were better in Brussels (and few institutions display such signs of collapsed morale as the Commission), it is doubtful whether the public really wants a united Foreign Office as such, or whether national politicians would allow it.

The real failure of Europe lies with its political leadership. For all the talk of needing a common foreign and defence presence, they have done nothing to bring it about. Prime ministers and presidents do not trust their foreign affairs ministers to determine foreign policy, singly or together within the Union (can you imagine Tony Blair letting Jack Straw conjoin with his continental colleagues to pronounce on the Middle East?). Meetings of EU foreign secretaries haven't half the authority of meetings of agriculture ministers, let alone finance ministers.

Under the "troika" system, the current, past and future presidents of the Union are supposed to cope with immediate crises. But the troika doesn't have a permanent staff, is overly obsessed with the half-yearly summits, and is grossly overstrained when led by a small country such as Denmark, which holds the presidency at present.

The result is the recent farce in which the crisis between Morocco and Spain over the occupation of the Persil islands had to be sorted out by the Americans, although it concerned a member of the troika, Spain, and a North African neighbour desperate to achieve a closer commercial relationship with the European Union. No wonder the Americans treat the Union as a toothless gang of wimps (not that Washington would want it any different if it came to objecting to its policy on Iraq).

There is a way forward. It involves giving more authority to ministerial meetings, dismantling the monolithic structure of biannual summits, and creating the logistics for more ad-hoc summits. It means European leaders showing the determination to act together. The alternative is not national vigour but separate impotence.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in