Obama's decision will hurt all the more because the EU is in the process, so it thinks, of beefing up its common foreign policy and the way it projects itself to the rest of the world. Now that the EU's Lisbon treaty is in force, the 27-nation bloc has a full-time president, Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium, and a foreign policy chief with enhanced powers, Britain's Baroness Catherine Ashton. Along with José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain's prime minister, this pair would presumably have been in Madrid to greet Obama. But in a way this is precisely the EU's problem. Obama and other world leaders can't figure out who exactly speaks for Europe. So far, the main effect of the Lisbon treaty seems to have been simply to add one more European - Van Rompuy - to the party. Neither Barroso nor Zapatero is showing any inclination to step to one side and let Van Rompuy be Europe's main man. It hardly helps, of course, that virtually no one in Washington had heard of Van Rompuy or Ashton until EU leaders picked them in November for two of the bloc's highest jobs. However, the Obama decision is about more than US-EU relations. It is about the EU's obsolete practice of holding regular summits with third parties - Canada, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, the US and so on - that are usually almost completely empty of substance. I recall travelling to Bordeaux in July 2008, when France held the EU's presidency, to watch President Nicolas Sakozy host a summit for Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's president. It was all over in a flash. Sarko even left early so that he could return to Paris to meet Obama, who at that point was a mere candidate for the presidency making a quick trip to Europe.
But in a way this is precisely the EU's problem. Obama and other world leaders can't figure out who exactly speaks for Europe. So far, the main effect of the Lisbon treaty seems to have been simply to add one more European - Van Rompuy - to the party. Neither Barroso nor Zapatero is showing any inclination to step to one side and let Van Rompuy be Europe's main man. It hardly helps, of course, that virtually no one in Washington had heard of Van Rompuy or Ashton until EU leaders picked them in November for two of the bloc's highest jobs.
However, the Obama decision is about more than US-EU relations. It is about the EU's obsolete practice of holding regular summits with third parties - Canada, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, the US and so on - that are usually almost completely empty of substance. I recall travelling to Bordeaux in July 2008, when France held the EU's presidency, to watch President Nicolas Sakozy host a summit for Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's president. It was all over in a flash. Sarko even left early so that he could return to Paris to meet Obama, who at that point was a mere candidate for the presidency making a quick trip to Europe.
Nowadays, however, a name does not readily come to mind if we are to say who would answer Europe's phone when President Obama called!
And in this case Omaba has no need to call anyone. There's a multi-level bilateral summit hosted by the EU. The EU can suggest a number of events that will take place during the summit and the US can send whomever to each one. Obama is not going to show up at a meeting where he can send Geithner. Or Clinton. Obama is saying that he has no need to be at the summit. His underlings can do all that needs done except for the photo ops. Hopefully he will send Clinton.
As for phone calls, the Secretary of State's counterpart is the High Representative. In this case, Clinton calls Ashton.
That's the only clear-cut case, admittedly.
Van Rompuy's function is like that of the speaker of the Senate. It's probably Biden's job to meet with him. In that sense it's totally appropriate despite the derision of the sewious people that van Rompuy wants to hold an informal Council meeting in a library. The problem is that the position of Counci President was invented so that Blair could grandstand and steal the High Representative's attributions. See A-B-C, The Seven Dwarfs, And The Giant Bird by afew (October 20th, 2009).
Barroso is the head of the EU's executive. Obama should probably meet him. But that's from the point of view of managing the EU bureaucracy. The political direction is intergovernmental and lies with the Council, and that means the rotating President, in this case Zapatero. So Obama would have to meet with him, too. Which is only fair in any case since ZP is the head of government hosting the summit.
I understand Obama might prefer to just meet with Brown, Sarkozy or Merkel, but that's three people, too, right? En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Yeah, because the EU just does whatever the British Prime Minister tells them, right?
Just because the US president calls No.10 when he wants to speak to Europe doesn't mean that's what he should be doing. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Left to right: High Representative for the CSFP Javier Solana, US President Barack Obama, European Commission President José Barroso and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrick Reinfeldt.
Note also that Javier Solana was not only High Representative but also Council Secretary General - a job that has now been beefed up and given to van Rompuy.
But any excuse is good to sound the [Europe.Is.Doomed™ Alert] . En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Why put about this suggestion that the EU is a joke that can't get its act together? Perhaps because it suits American interests that Europe should not unify. What the US, as an imperial power, would prefer is Europe as a group of separate countries that each follows the American lead. Washington prefers bilateral relations with each European country, in which the power relationship of major to minor is evident, rather than with a bloc that could claim a more even power-share.
Oh, bilateral relations means picking up twenty-seven telephones... But we never hear that joke, do we?
...The transatlantic partnership does not need more summits, fora, or dialogues. The Prague summit at which President Obama was subjected to 27 interventions from the EU's assembled heads of state and government was an eye-opener for his administration: senior figures have made plain to us their dread that the Spanish initiative could lead to something called "the Madrid Process". What is needed instead is serious European discussion of which issues currently really matter in transatlantic terms - and on which of those issues Europeans can present a united position to the Americans......The continuing inadequacy of formal EU-US dialogue is particularly exposed by the annual EU-US summits. These meetings normally bring together the US president and relevant cabinet members with the president of the European Commission, the head of state and/or government of the country that holds the European Council's rotating presidency, the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, relevant European commissioners and their equivalents from the presidency government, and sometimes those of the next government in line. To Americans, these summits are all too typical of the European love of process over substance, and a European compulsion for everyone to crowd into the room regardless of efficiency.12 Bush was so dismayed by his first summit experience at Gothenburg in 2001 that he promptly halved the meetings' frequency to once a year; administration sources are frank that Obama's encounter with all 27 European heads of state and government at the Prague summit in April 2008 left him incredulous. As a result of this complex, compartmentalised relationship, Americans feel as if they are trying to deal with Proteus. The shape-shifting Europeans appear now as NATO allies; now as an EU that in turn sometimes appears as 27 states trying to act as one and sometimes one trying to act for 27; and now as individual states, each of whom expects its own relationship and access...
What is needed instead is serious European discussion of which issues currently really matter in transatlantic terms - and on which of those issues Europeans can present a united position to the Americans...
...
The continuing inadequacy of formal EU-US dialogue is particularly exposed by the annual EU-US summits. These meetings normally bring together the US president and relevant cabinet members with the president of the European Commission, the head of state and/or government of the country that holds the European Council's rotating presidency, the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, relevant European commissioners and their equivalents from the presidency government, and sometimes those of the next government in line. To Americans, these summits are all too typical of the European love of process over substance, and a European compulsion for everyone to crowd into the room regardless of efficiency.12 Bush was so dismayed by his first summit experience at Gothenburg in 2001 that he promptly halved the meetings' frequency to once a year; administration sources are frank that Obama's encounter with all 27 European heads of state and government at the Prague summit in April 2008 left him incredulous.
As a result of this complex, compartmentalised relationship, Americans feel as if they are trying to deal with Proteus. The shape-shifting Europeans appear now as NATO allies; now as an EU that in turn sometimes appears as 27 states trying to act as one and sometimes one trying to act for 27; and now as individual states, each of whom expects its own relationship and access...
From a study highlighted by nanne in Power Void in Europe. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
