Obama's election, he said, has boosted the image of the US in the world to the point where the situation can be "a potential lever for all of us" to "change the relationship" and "repair the breakdown that has taken place between the Judaeo-Christian world - encompassing Europe and the US - and the world of Islam".
Bruton said Obama will engage constructively with the EU, noting that his electoral platform "mentioned the EU in a very strong fashion". This approach is seen as a "good sign" by the ambassador, "not just for the EU, but for Obama's approach to multilateralism in general, indicating that he is prepared to recognise and work with mature multinational institutions".
Arguing that the new president can "see in the EU the benefit of pooling sovereignty," Bruton said "the reality is, even for a big country like the US, some of the problems that beset it are simply too big to tackle on its own. Europeans learned that long ago".
The ambassador hailed the "invincible optimism" and "can-do spirit" of the American people, which "will be very important in solving the many global issues we are currently faced with".
However, he also noted that "Americans need to learn, in turn, that in the area of climate change, for example, optimism on its own won't solve the problem". "We need to create an incentive structure that makes people put money into energy conservation [and] into R&D on clean energy sources," Bruton explained.
The EU ambassador outlined the European Commission's main hopes for the new administration, notably "an injection of urgency into the world trade round".
Bruton argues that American expectations for a global agreement are currently unrealistic. "I don't think that a world trade round should be looked at in such a mercantilist way," he said, warning that in the absence of an agreement, "we have a serious risk of reversion to protectionism".
As a result, he suggested that "the administration would be better off using its political capital to get a big trade deal through – one big global deal – rather than having to see that capital diminished with an endless succession of bilateral agreements".
