The EU has taken a big step toward speaking with a single voice in world affairs with the signing yesterday of the Lisbon Treaty. This provides not only for a single president of the Union but also, perhaps more importantly, a foreign affairs spokesman. It is widely agreed by both supporters and opponents of the new dispensation, that the Lisbon Treaty is effectively the original constitution that was rejected in 2005 by French and Dutch voters.
The Poles and British have been allowed to opt out of certain provisions in the hope that their parliamentarians will ratify the deal. Only the Irish will be holding a referendum, because they are obliged to under their own constitution. Paris and The Hague have no intention of risking a second voter consultation. Meanwhile Britain’s new premier, Gordon Brown, whose party won office on the promise of a referendum over an EU constitution, says that since the Lisbon Treaty doesn’t have the word “Constitution” on its front page, no vote of approval (or more likely knowing the British, disapproval) will be sought. There are clearly political troubles ahead for many those government leaders who intend to drag their citizens, whatever they actually want, into an ever deeper union of the 27 EU member states. However an opportunity has presented itself, which may help convince doubting European citizens that a single united foreign policy will enable the EU to punch at or even above its weight.
In the soggy embers of his presidency, George W. Bush is edging toward reversing the very first of the many disastrous decisions of his incumbency. Within hours of occupying the Oval Office, he trashed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to which the outgoing President Clinton had committed his country. Now, as the major climate change talks in Bali enter their last day today, the EU is threatening to boycott a meeting called by Washington for next month in Hawaii. Bush wants the biggest polluters including China, India and the EU to get together and see what they can do to cut their carbon emissions. The EU rightly thinks any such meeting under US auspices will be useless unless Washington first signs up to the Kyoto Protocol. In short, to back the proposed Hawaii meeting would give George Bush climate change credentials he in no way deserves.
This is just the sort of emotive issue around which European citizens, from whatever state, can get behind the nascent foreign policy machine in Brussels. Less popular unfortunately are the EU’s other international responsibilities including its membership of the Quartet over Palestine and the future of Kosovo. On the latter EU opinion is deeply divided. On Palestine, Brussels has never managed to speak with sufficient authority to earn respect and be listened to. At best the EU writes or at least promises to write big checks and can sometimes present itself as an honest broker. What the Arab world would rather see are strong European initiatives and far deeper and more independent involvement from Brussels. A single EU foreign policy voice will facilitate such developments.
