Brussels, July 07: A few days ago, a reporter asked a British Conservative what he thinks the effect will be on the world and people like Barack Obama if the European Union finally succeeds by the end of year in adopting a constitution and in naming its first president and foreign minister.
George Osborne, who is likely to become chancellor of the Exchequer if the Conservatives win the British general elections that must be held in the next 10 months, glanced upward as if to summon diplomatic moderation.
He answered, “I don’t think that’s how the E.U. becomes more relevant.”
Of course, Mr. Osborne would say that, no? He’s a British euroskeptic.
A not so strange coincidence enters here. Almost at the same moment last week, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, a Labour Party pro-European, jumped on the same case: Europe’s wavering relevance.
In the run-up to the G-8 meeting of the world’s leading industrial nations plus Russia this week in Italy, Mr. Miliband said in effect that Europe’s desire to be a global decision-maker was in trouble:
“If we want to avoid a so-called G-2 world, shaped by the U.S.-China relationship, we need to make G-3 cooperation work — with the E.U. as the third leg.”
In an op-ed article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mr. Miliband sought to gently set out the European realities that the world notices instead of the eternal Brussels chatter over a date for the election of the European Commission president, or whether Tony Blair or Felipe González holds the inside track to become the E.U. Council’s first president (that is, if the Lisbon Treaty’s tortured ratification process ever allows it).
Without mentioning the dismal voter turnout at the European parliamentary elections last month, the foreign secretary said there was a big challenge for pro-Europeans “to counter apathy or negativism about the E.U.” He did not argue that Europe had become substantially weaker during the recession — no need to belabor the obvious — but insisted that its economic and societal models (hello Germany) were threatened and suggested that “change” and “renewal” and “harder work” were urgently needed in the E.U. to replace “continuity.”
Read that as a very, very diplomatic expression of concern that Europe is going nowhere.
That’s from inside the house. But what if the potential G-2 folks in Washington and Beijing were evaluating Europe’s relevance as a possible co-equal, using midsummer last year as a starting point for reference?
The Chinese and Americans couldn’t have missed the following:
In the area of foreign policy, the European Union played the central role in arranging a cease-fire after Russia invaded parts of Georgia in August. Since then the Russians annexed two Georgian provinces, maintained their occupation, oversaw the departure of international monitors, and announced a doctrine stating Russia’s “privileged” status in relation to the former Soviet republics on its borders.
The E.U. response was effectively nil. There were no sanctions. (So why, you might ask, should Iran, which hasn’t attacked anybody in the neighborhood yet, worry about Europe’s wrath?) Then, talks on a so-called strategic partnership between the E.U. and Russia were resumed — hardly a demonstration of European resolve either.
When it comes to Afghanistan, the Europeans, with two million troops under arms, have welcomed the Americans’ willingness to take over next to total responsibility for fighting the war while assigning Europe what is largely a training and civilian development role.
In connection with its own security, the E.U. has failed to adopt a specific program to safeguard its energy needs and counteract Russia’s domination as its supplier. As for creating a European defense force as a pillar of NATO, diminished budgets are certain to sink further as a result of the recession.
But the overwhelming question about the European Union’s relevance now goes to the place where it has had great importance — the trading strength of a 27-nation common market.
If the global recession has shown anything, it’s that its effects have been profound in Germany, the E.U.’s economic pulse, where the national creed and formula for success (world-leading exports and special relationships among the state, banks and industry) appears damaged or even lamed. The circumstances are now so obvious that Mr. Miliband, for all his caution, chose to single out by name the German system of Soziale Marktwirtschaft, or social market economy, as being “under threat.”
Less circumspect, a Brussels-based diplomat from an E.U. country, offering frank views in exchange for anonymity, said that the export model of Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia “isn’t going to come back” because of deep changes affecting the future makeup of economies like those in the United States, Britain and Spain.
The phrase sounded a lot like the stuff of an economic Kulturkampf growling inside the E.U.
On one side, there was Germany, burdened with what its own E.U. commissioner called the world’s most poisoned banking system, but insisting it had gotten things right. And adding that there would be no change in its export-oriented approach because the recession was all about the speculative excesses of U.S. and British financial capitalism.
On the other, there were Europeans saying that the German governing coalition, its parties preparing for national elections in September, sought a moral high ground to avoid debating basic structural change. Both major parties have promised for months to a change-averse electorate that no painful economic recalibration is needed.
The Brussels diplomat described that approach as one of “concealment” wrapped in calls for more market regulation. Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, sustaining the foul in-fighting last week, called “London’s financial center especially suspicious in my eyes.”
So once again: might Europe’s relevance for the Americans and Chinese be boosted through the possible arrival of the first president to represent all of the European Union?
Frits Bolkestein, a passionate pro-European, liberal, and former E.U. commissioner for the Netherlands, replied with this sly, glancing observation:
“I ask you, has anybody out there noticed over the last two years that Tony Blair has been special envoy to the Middle East of the Quartet?”
Mr. Bolkestein might have added that the lack of success of Mr. Blair’s current assignment and lofty title has come with the sponsorship (and hobbling contradictions) not only of the European Union, but the United Nations, Russia and the United States.
