European economic giant remains a political pygmy

By CATHERINE FIELD Herald correspondent

PARIS - European integrationists have a cherished dream: that one day the European Union will stride the world stage speaking with a political voice every bit as powerful as its economic might.

This EU would no longer be cowed by the United States. It would look Washington squarely in the eye.

And the new power would be no brash, selfish American adolescent. No: it would be wise old Europe, enriched by its cultures and the lessons of its own dark history. It would tackle world crises with sensitivity, generosity and an eye to the long term.

Now for the reality check. The cold truth, rammed home by the Iraq war, is this: the European economic giant is still a political pygmy. And it is likely to remain pint-sized for years to come.

"You can talk as much as you like about a common foreign and security policy," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. "But the fact is that when the moment comes along, a series of countries - the big ones - do not want to give up self-determination."

The Iraqi crisis ripped the EU apart and made a mockery of its global pretensions.

For several months there was a facade of unity, maintained by fuzzy communiquaacés that hoped for peace and urged Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions. But as the US began its countdown for war, the tensions erupted into the open and all thought of EU unity was thrown out of the window.

The punchup began for real in January. Britain, Italy and Spain backed the US; France, Germany and Belgium were opposed. And small neutral or undecided countries were stuck in the middle. The pro-US faction joined with several Eastern European countries who will join the EU next year, and published a blatant statement of support for Washington in the press.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac came to loathe each other so much they could not even accept each other's gifts. Underneath all the huggy Euro-babble, the old instincts of siding with Washington or acting selfishly for glory had returned at a flash.

Now, like party brawlers with a hangover, EU leaders are glumly surveying the damage of the night before. A summit in Athens last week went some way to ease the ill-feeling. But nothing, it seems, can repair the broken pieces of the common foreign policy dream. It has suffered "a severe setback", admitted Chris Patten, the EU Commission's external relations representative.

Foreign policy and defence are the last bastions of national sovereignty in the EU. Elsewhere, national powers - currencies, border controls, protectionist regulations and so on - have been either transferred to Brussels, diluted, harmonised or demolished.

The assault on this last redoubt began in 1993 with the enshrinement of a common policy in the Maastricht Treaty, and two successive treaties added legal flesh and administrative Machinery to it.

They created two representatives to speak for the EU on external relations and security and empowered the EU to organise peacekeeping in troubled areas, the first potential step out from Nato's shadow.

There is an important point, though: A common foreign policy is agreed by all members. The strategies are hammered out by the member-states at summits and ministerial level, and each retains its right of veto.

The joint strategies are usually a lowest common denominator, often because pro-US countries do not wish to challenge America's primacy. And the foreign policy representatives have little clout because their masters are the Council of Ministers, the top decision-making body.

The best chance of fixing these problems came last year with the launch of a conference to overhaul Europe's institutions in the runup to the "Big Bang", when EU membership expands from 15 to 25 countries in May 2004.

The convention, chaired by former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, is due to submit its recommendations by the end of June. Some of its thinking has been ambitiously integrationist. Some delegates have suggested changing the name of the EU to the United States of Europe, appointing a permanent EU president, rather than rotating the presidency every six months, and having an EU foreign minister.

But the outcome of the Iraqi war has clearly tipped in favour of Britain and other "Euro-realists", who want an EU where member states co-operate if they can, but keep significant competencies, such as foreign policy and defence, for themselves. The pragmatists are now in the ascendancy, and are determined to water down the convention's ambitious reforms, or reject them outright if need be.

If so, the Europe of the future will speak with several voices rather than a single voice, and there will be vocal demands for intimate ties with Washington and Nato, opposing the radicals who want to weaken the transatlantic connection and set up the EU as a potential challenger to the US. The pro-US strand will be reinforced next year by the induction of Eastern countries such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

That doesn't mean the integrationists' dream is over. Some are reviving controversial ideas of a "two-speed" Europe in which a vanguard of federal-minded countries would race ahead, launching foreign policy initiatives of their own or even creating a common army. This would be a model for the other EU members to join when they felt ready for it.

The crisis "may in fact turn out to be fertile and enable [Europe] to become an international player," French Socialist MPs Julien Dray and Jean-Louis Bianco said in a commentary published last week. "The status quo would be the best way of ensuring Europe is a satellite of the American hyperpower."