Speaking at the Brussels Forum of the German Marshall Fund, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, permanent president of the European Council, outlined their visions for reviving EU-US relations.
"Europe and the United States find themselves at a crossroads," said Barroso, stressing that in a changing world the partnership must adjust to new realities if it is to continue to flourish.
Towards a more dynamic, results-oriented partnership
In a world of new threats and challenges, Barroso underlined the need for a more dynamic partnership, one that would be more outward-looking and engage more third parties, including China, India and Brazil.
"We can build on what we have achieved by combining our efforts to reform the architecture of international cooperation, by working together to mitigate climate change whilst achieving greater energy security and by creating a common transatlantic area of security," Barroso said.
Echoing Barroso, Van Rompuy told an audience filled with US officials that the EU and the USA should together seek responses to old and new forms of global insecurity, and invite others to join in. "That is how I see our common story," said the European Council president.
Overcoming a year of tense relations
EU-US cooperation in US President Barack Obama's first year has a mixed record at best, and certainly falls short of the hopes fuelled by his election in 2008.
According to Constanze Stelzenmüller, a German Marshall Fund analyst, the initial enthusiasm for a new EU-US partnership was undermined by not one, but many obstacles.
The analyst quotes Europe's unwillingness to take in prisoners released from Guantanamo and resistance to Obama's calls for more Keynesian measures to be taken against the financial crisis.
US pleas for more troops in Afghanistan were also received with stony silence for months, and a bank data-sharing agreement aimed at tracking suspected terrorists was rejected by the European Parliament.
But Europe has also had its share of frustration (see 'Background'). The bloc was sidelined during negotiations over the final climate accord in Copenhagen, ignored by Washington when the administration unilaterally announced reform of the US banking system that undercut G20 discussions, and disappointed by Obama's decision to skip a scheduled EU-US summit in May.
Yet "we must not treat every disagreement as a crisis or breakdown," stressed Van Rompuy, who claimed that instead such spats prove the depth of the transatlantic relationship.
"What unites us is a more fundamental and more long-lasting relationship. The only easy relationship is an empty relationship!" Van Rompuy concluded.
Barroso II to focus on global Europe
If Brussels has focused in the past five years on consolidating the enlarged European Union and the final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the Barroso II Commission is determined to frame an agenda for a global Europe and that cannot be achieved without the US.
However, the European Union does not possess anything like a global foreign and security policy, or even a transatlantic policy, notes Stelzenmüller. The relationship between the EU and the US is old, broad and deep, she added, but it is not strategic – at least not as far as America is concerned, she added.
When President Obama spoke to the European Parliament a year ago, he was quick to underline that "the relevance of our relationship in the future will be premised not on our shared history, values or interests, but on Europe's will and ability to adjust to this new global reality and to share its burdens with us and others".
Barroso and Van Rompuy seem to have heard the call and appear ready to jump-start a more constructive partnership better fit to tackle the challenges of the 21st century: climate change, cyber crime, nuclear proliferation and terrorism.
