When she talks about her government’s forthcoming European Union presidency, Cecilia Malmström, Sweden’s European affairs minister, likes to quote the late John Lennon: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
Given the EU’s troubles with its frozen Lisbon reform treaty, it might have been equally apt to cite the lyrics in Lennon’s 1968 song, ‘Revolution’: “You say you’ll change the constitution/ Well, you know/ We all want to change your head.”
As Malmström sees it, political events have a tendency to unfold in ways rather different from your original hopes and plans. And it is how you prepare for the unexpected, says Malmström, that is one of the keys to running a successful EU presidency.
When she was in Brussels the other day sketching a picture of how Sweden would run its six-month presidency, which starts on July 1, she said her government was analysing the lessons from various unexpected incidents involving Europe over recent years. One was how the Czech Republic, the current EU president, had handled January’s Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute, which shut down Europe’s gas imports from Russia, and the simultaneous Israeli assault on Gaza. These crises erupted before the Czechs had time to draw breath in assuming their presidential duties and presented them with a truly severe challenge.
The second incident was the Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July and August 2006. Finland held the EU presidency at that time, and Malmström said Swedish experts had consulted their Finnish colleagues to learn from their experiences.
Intriguingly, the third episode she mentioned was Sweden’s handling of the tsunami that struck south-east Asia in December 2004. Thousands of Swedish tourists were in the region on holiday, and more than 500 were killed. The response of the authorities in Stockholm to what was one of the greatest calamities in modern Swedish history was, at first, too slow. “Our system failed the citizens,” Malmström says.
Self-criticism doesn’t, of course, guarantee that a government or its administrators will get it completely right next time. But it is a good quality to have, and one that should stand Sweden in good stead in the second half of this year.
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