US President Barack Obama dealt the EU a blow last week when he declined an invitation to attend a planned EU-US summit.
The cancellation was in large part triggered by European squabbling over whether to hold the summit in Spain, which holds the rotating EU presidency, or Brussels, where the bloc's new president, Herman Van Rompuy, is based (EurActiv 02/02/10).
"Figure it out and let us know," a US State Department official answered bluntly, echoing an old EU leadership problem that the newly-established Lisbon Treaty was in fact supposed to solve.
Obama's summit snub left Europeans wondering whether their new institutions were working as intended and truly allowing the EU to "speak with a single voice" on the world stage.
"The wrangling over the next EU-US summit shows that the EU won’t get its act together until the egotism of member-state leaders is brought under control," says Stanley Crossick, founding chairman of the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think-tank.
For Crossick, this "pathetic" episode of "egotistical wrangling" raises the question of whether the Lisbon Treaty is actually "creating more difficulties than it is resolves," he wrote on his blog.
EU setbacks in Copenhagen and Haiti
But the US summit snub was not the only setback for the EU's reformed institutions.
Catherine Ashton, the Union's new foreign affairs chief, was criticised by French Europe Minister Pierre Lellouche last month for missing an opportunity to 'fly the flag' in earthquake-hit Haiti, at a time when the Lisbon Treaty was supposed to give Europeans a single voice in world affairs (EurActiv 25/01/10).
Joseph Daul, leader of the European Parliament's largest political group, the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), relayed those criticisms on Tuesday (9 February).
"From Haiti to Iran, from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Cuba to transatlantic relations, the European voice has not, to date, met our expectations," Daul said in a statement.
"The High Representative must embody a presence, an ambition and a reality that is the Union: a Union that is first in global GDP, has the largest market and is the world's largest contributor to international aid," he added.
The UN climate conference in December, which failed to live up to Europe’s expectations, seemed to serve as another example of the EU’s declining influence in world affairs, despite its widely-touted new treaty. The final text of the conference was negotiated betweena US-led group of five nations, including China, India, Brazil and South Africa, leaving the Europeans largely sidelined (EurActiv 19/12/09).
The Liberal group leader in the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, recently echoed Daul's concerns about Europe's lack of influence, saying "it would not be an understatement to say that the Union is not faring well".
"We need only refer to the dramatic result of the Copenhagen conference, where an agreement was concluded without the European Union, the lack of a coordinated response to the relief effort in Haiti, or the descending spiral that the euro zone has been drawn into following the difficulties encountered by Greece," he wrote in an open letter addressed to Van Rompuy ahead of Thursday's summit.
Verhofstadt, who was seen by many as a better choice for the EU's new president job, says Copenhagen may well have produced a different outcome had Europe been represented by a single person, instead of eight (Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen who hosted the summit, José Manuel Barroso representing the European Commission, Frederik Reinfeldt representing the Swedish EU Presidency, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero representing the incoming Spanish EU Presidency, Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, and national leaders Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel).
Diplomat calls for time
Speaking to Brussels-based journalists, an ambassador from one of the EU's large member states said it was "quite natural that the treaty creates expectations". "But it is also natural that its implementation takes time," he added, citing as an example the new diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS), which is to be headed by Ashton.
Putting in place such a service "represents considerable work," the ambassador stressed, saying "it will be the big project of the coming years".
The setbacks in Haiti and Copenhagen, he added, "showed that we need a new system but do not mean the new system doesn't work. Instead of saying that the EU was not up to the task in Haiti and Copenhagen, recent events give further justification for putting in place the new system".
