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European Affairs
European Perspectives
After Iraq, the EU Can Learn from its Disarray
By Fraser Cameron
The Iraq crisis has posed some fundamental questions about the European Union's common foreign and security policy (CFSP) as well as about the future of the United Nations and NATO. Some commentators have been quick to write off the CFSP as a bad joke. Others have suggested that it should be delayed for several years. And others have proposed that it should only operate in the European Union's immediate neighborhood, notably the Balkans.
The ramifications of the Union's disarray over Iraq have also had a major impact on the Convention on the Future of Europe, which is currently negotiating a proposed draft EU constitution. The President of the Convention, former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France, has postponed discussion of new treaty articles on the CFSP until May.
More broadly, the crisis has buffeted relations with the Central and Eastern European countries that are due to join the European Union in May 2004, and revived calls for a more flexible Europe, with an advance guard, based on the Franco-German axis, leading the way toward the Union's final political destination.
These instant reactions, fueled by letters in support of the United States from 18 countries, including 13 of the 25 current and future EU members, demonstrate little understanding that the CFSP is a relatively new policy area and one with a reasonable number of modest successes to its name. Indeed, based on past experience, there is some reason to hope that the current divisions and disarray so evident in the current crisis will lead to a genuine improvement in the CFSP once the dust has settled.
The failures of the early years of the Balkan conflict in the 1990s, when the Union looked weak and divided, were a tough learning process. But the Union did learn, and today it has responsibility for the police mission in Bosnia and has taken over responsibility for peacekeeping in Macedonia from NATO. In about 90 percent of external issues, from the new International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to Russia and the Middle East, the European Union does act together and speaks with one voice.
This is quite a remarkable achievement for a Union of 15 diverse member states with very different views, experiences and capabilities in foreign and security policy. Certainly, the consistent public opposition throughout Europe to the war in Iraq is a remarkable phenomenon and something on which to build. So, too, is the overwhelming public support for a strengthened EU foreign and security policy expressed in opinion surveys.
This is what makes the EU disarray over Iraq all the more regrettable. It was the governments that were divided, not the people. Indeed the largest demonstrations against the war were in Britain and Spain, where the governments were among the strongest supporters of the U.S. war effort.
To some extent, however, the fiasco was an accident waiting to happen. EU leaders have never found time to hold a thorough debate on the European Union's strategic interests and priorities. Nor was the Convention given such a mandate. Rather it was asked to concentrate on improving CFSP procedures. To date, it has come up with a number of useful suggestions, including:
Grant the European Union legal personality to sign international agreements.
Accept more use of qualified majority voting (QMV).
Merge the functions of Javier Solana, High Representative for foreign policy, and Chris Patten, European Commissioner for External Affairs, to create an EU foreign minister.
Establish a European diplomatic service, and a diplomatic academy.
Update and extend the areas suitable for joint military and security action (the Petersberg Tasks).
Introduce a solidarity clause for mutual defense and countering terrorist attacks.
Allow flexibility in defense policy, and in armaments cooperation.
Create a European Armaments Agency.
Nevertheless, as Alain Lamassoure, a French Member of the European Parliament, has commented, the CFSP debates in the Convention have a surreal quality. Why argue about technical procedures and qualified majority voting when there is no agreement on the basic direction in which the Union should move on strategic issues?
Once the war in Iraq is over, it should be a priority for the European Council, the forum in which EU heads of state and government meet, to discuss some of the following key strategic issues:
The changing international order, and how to deal with the world's sole superpower.
How to strengthen the institutions of global governance.
The threats the Union faces and the security role it should develop.
It should be obvious from even a cursory look at trade policy that the European Union is respected in Washington when it speaks with one voice. Now, the large member states want to install a semi-permanent Chairman of the European Council who would be the principal EU voice in foreign policy. That is fine in theory, but recent practice tends to cast doubt on the ability of such a person to open his or her mouth in a serious crisis.
Hence the importance of agreement on major policy issues before anyone attempts to speak for the Union or circulates draft foreign policy letters for governments to sign. The European Union has moved on after past crises and come out strengthened. There is no reason to doubt that it will do the same after the war in Iraq.
Fraser Cameron is Director of Studies at the European Policy Centre in Brussels and author of a new Working Paper on the Convention and the CFSP.