A result-oriented approach, which is close to American thinking, should be the base for upgrading EU-US partnership, Buzek said at a conference in parliament, organized by Notre Europe.
The think-tank, founded by former long-serving Commission president Jacques Delors, unveiled a ‘Concept paper’ titled “Reshaping EU-US relations”. Its authors include Delors, Buzek, former Commission president Romano Prodi, ALDE leader Guy Verhofstadt, former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, former prime minister of Finland Paavo Lipponen and Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, president of Notre Europe.
Buzek said the world needed to see the beginning of ‘responsible global governance’, in which the EU had a role to play, together with the US and the other actors of the multipolar world. In his words, the European Union was now equipped to do its part of the job, with a new treaty, a new parliament with more powers, a new Commission, and a European External Action Service which would be soon operational.
“The so-called West is incapable to solve the many international challenges”, Buzek said, calling for a new multilateral governance in which the Union would find the framework to promote its values and make use of its ‘soft power’. He called the EU-US relations a ‘springboard’ to kick start such a governance, but added that “a springboard is not sufficient for a good jump”, as the West needed to engage other partners as well.
One of the most important statements of the ‘Concept paper’ is that in spite of the recovered international credibility of the USA under president Barack Obama, the European-American partnership is still unable to deliver, as demonstrated by the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Conference of December 2009. One of the reasons, it says, is that “partners refocus their energies on domestic policies”.
Buzek admitted that Europe still needed to strengthen its internal positions. “To have strong international positions, we need strong internal positions,” he said. In this context, he advised European to be more pragmatic, as Americans are known to be.
Regarding the recent Parliament vote against extending the interim SWIFT agreement between the EU and the US on the transfer of citizens' financial data to prevent terrorist attacks (EurActiv 11/02/10), Buzek said that the reason of the vote were “own EU internal problems”, and it was “not about the US”.
