EU FOREIGN POLICY: From bystander to actor By Steven Everts ★ If Europe’s leaders want the EU to play a meaningful role in global diplomacy, they must implement a series of fundamental reforms. At a minimum, they should abolish the rotating presidency, create a new Foreign Policy Council and give a right of initiative to the High Representative for foreign policy, currently Javier Solana. ★ The EU must also learn to use its wide-ranging set of instruments – such as policies on trade, aid and migration – to support a clear political strategy. In particular, it should increasingly make its financial assistance conditional upon recipient countries respecting international standards on good governance, democratisation and non-proliferation.
Foreign Policy – broadly defined – is becoming increasingly important in the EU. While the EU is often unpopular, more than 70 per cent of EU citizens want the EU to play a bigger role in world affairs. Whether the issue is the crisis in the Middle East, rising US unilateralism or on-going instability in the Balkans, the question that echoes throughout the Union is always the same: what can Europe do? Both leaders and the public are unsatisfied with the mismatch between the EU’s economic resources and its diplomatic clout. Both also instinctively understand that European countries can only influence global trends by pooling resources and putting out a united message. So it is right for the Convention on the future of the EU to look seriously at how to improve the EU’s performance in foreign policy. Some results in that field would have a positive impact on the EU’s ability to tackle problems around the world and would also boost the EU’s legitimacy with the public. To create a credible EU foreign policy, EU leaders need to address four inter-related challenges. They should make decision-making more effective, ensure greater coherence across the whole range of EU external relations, show
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more courage in promoting EU values, and learn to set clear priorities. 1. Streamline decision-making and give the High Representative more resources, including a right of initiative The EU must improve its ability to act. For a start, the EU should abolish the rotating presidency, which puts a different country in the EU’s driving seat every six months. Javier Solana, the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (Mr CFSP), and his officials should take over the crucial tasks of representing the EU externally, chairing CFSP working groups and Council meetings, and providing impetus and followup. EU foreign policy can ill afford the harmful consequences of changing the presidency every six months. The CFSP decision-making process also needs to become smoother, especially if the Union is to avoid total paralysis after enlargement. There is a real danger that EU decision-making will become even harder than it is today. Enlargement will bring in ten
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