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Pluto holds a summit
June 19, 2008
According to the memorable aphorism of Robert Kagan, the conservative US scholar, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus. But when President George W. Bush was in Europe last week and heard about Ireland’s rejection of the European Union’s Lisbon treaty in a referendum, it must have seemed to the outgoing president that Europeans are so incapable of getting their act together that they’re really from Pluto - which astronomers no longer classify as a planet.
The same thought may cross the mind of President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia when EU leaders arrive next week in the western Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiysk for an EU-Russia summit. Of course, it’s possible Medvedev will be rather more exercised about the revelation that the US has been thinking about putting part of its proposed missile defence system in Lithuania - which is precisely the sort of things that Martians, rather than Plutonians, do.
Today the leaders of the EU’s 27 member-states are rolling into Brussels for a summit whose main theme, before the crisis erupted over the Lisbon treaty, was supposed to be a robust European response to soaring fuel and food prices. Of course, there isn’t much the EU can do on that front, either, because in the end it’s mostly a question of world demand and supply.
Still, I don’t buy the oft-heard argument that EU leaders are totally out of touch with public opinion. Take last Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg. Much breast-beating went on there about whether the Irish referendum result showed that the EU was too technocratic and too elitist. According to two people who attended the discussions, one foreign minister - Radek Sikorski of Poland - even burst out: “Why don’t we write treaties that even we in this room can understand?”
A question to shake up any solar system!
Perhaps ‘liberum veto’ is in use on Pluto, explaining its relative insignificance.
Posted by: Ralf Grahn | June 19th, 2008 at 12:05 pm | Report this commentAll very droll, but one of the main things that Irish voters seemed to be saying is that DO NOT want the EU to become more Martian and less Venusian.
They, and many voters around the EU are happy for Europe NOT to get its act together and they don’t want its responses to anything to become much more robust.
In light of such popular feeling, I don’t think drafting treaties should be a priority, but rather creating a space where Europeans can debate the challenges facing them and realise their common interests.
Posted by: David | June 19th, 2008 at 2:40 pm | Report this commentEurope can easily do something about the “food crisis,” and that is abolishing its agricultural programme that wreaks havoc on the world market.
Posted by: mark | June 19th, 2008 at 3:57 pm | Report this commentIt is interesting you should bring up the EU referendum along with the Lithuania missile site issue - as we can see a connection.
I believe that Vilnius is just making a play for leverage against the Russians for energy negotiations, as the EU is forcing them to shut down their only nuclear reactor and make them 90% dependent on fossil fuels.
Those poor Baltic states - their new friends to the West simply cannot be counted on to help them whenever it is an issue involving Moscow. Do you need a treaty to express that failure?
Posted by: Robert Amsterdam | June 19th, 2008 at 8:46 pm | Report this commentI would want to remind to the Readers of FT that Poland and Cekia suffered the occupation of the USSR from 1945 to 1990.They know what means to live in a country humiliated from occupants,and this is the reason why they do not want to obey to the Franco-German plan of domination over Europe.The solution of the problem of unification of Europe is simple:no leaders of any kind,especially those who the citzens of the continent do not want:everyone,from Luxemburg to Germany,must have the same dignity.
Posted by: STEFANO DE SANTIS | June 20th, 2008 at 9:43 am | Report this comment