Brussels blog

Whether it’s climate change, foreign policy or the increasingly alarming fiscal crisis, the European Union’s difficulties can be summed up in one word: disunity.  After December 1, when the EU’s Lisbon treaty came into force, disunity was supposed to be a thing of the past.  Instead, disunity has proved to be very much a thing of the present.  What’s more, the Lisbon treaty may – at least in the short term – be making matters worse.

Take the world conference on climate change at Copenhagen in December.  According to Connie Hedegaard, the EU’s incoming climate change commissioner, disunity – in the sense of a cacophony of European voices – was an important factor behind the ability of other powers to brush aside the EU’s views.  “Those last hours in Copenhagen, China, India, Japan, Russia and the US each spoke with one voice, while Europe spoke with many different voices.  Sometimes we spend so much time agreeing with one another that when finally the EU comes to the international negotiations, we are almost unable to negotiate,” she told her confirmation hearing at the European Parliament last month.

The outcome of the Copenhagen conference hurt the EU, which couldn’t understand why Europe had been ignored when it had such progressive ideas about tackling climate change.  Still, on climate change the EU’s 27 countries do at least put on a certain display of unity.  They share a common target of a 20 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels.  They may even achieve this goal.

There is no such common approach visible in the fiscal emergency unfolding in Greece, Portugal and Spain.  This crisis cries out for more vigorous action from the eurogroup, the body that brings together finance ministers from the 16-nation eurozone.  For the sake of calming financial markets, it demands clarity from  eurozone governments about what they plan to do.  Instead, all the markets hear is that eurozone leaders are determined not to involve the International Monetary Fund, but don’t want to give any financial assistance themselves to Greece.  From the markets’ point of view, this is not exactly reassuring.

Disunity on foreign policy is just as obvious as it was before the Lisbon treaty came into effect.  It was painfully visible this week as a squabble broke out over who was responsible for Barack Obama’s decision not to travel to Spain in May for a US-EU summit.  Officials close to Herman Van Rompuy, the EU’s full-time president, said it was nothing to do with him.  They implied it was the fault of Spain, holder of the EU’s rotating presidency.  It does not seem to have occurred to the Europeans that Obama decided not to go because he couldn’t figure out who speaks for Europe – even after the Lisbon treaty - and how the summit would produce practical results in terms of Europe’s contribution on Afghanistan, Iran, Bosnia and so on.

Meanwhile, Spain is also getting flak for floating the idea of lifting the EU’s arms embargo on China.

The fact is, multiple contests for influence are going on inside the EU, some old and some triggered by the Lisbon treaty: i) between the full-time presidency and the rotating presidency; ii) between the rotating presidency and the office of the EU’s foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton; iii) between national governments and the European Parliament; iv) between national governments and the European Commission; v) between political groups in the Parliament, a struggle that seeps its poison all over Brussels; and vi) between the Commission and the Parliament.

This last contest needs careful monitoring, because the Parliament is seeking to exploit its enhanced position under the Lisbon treaty to claim obscure but important new rights.  José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, has just conceded that the legislature should have the same degree of access as EU governments to documentation on Commission meetings with national experts.  He has also agreed that all commissioners, even Lady Ashton, will be grilled at a new “Question Hour” during the assembly’s plenary sessions.  And he will seriously consider asking a commissioner to resign if the Parliament asks him to withdraw his confidence in him or her.

The EU’s institutions are in a highly fluid state as a result of the Lisbon treaty.  Maybe it will take some time before they begin to acquire a coherent shape.  But for the moment, the rest of the world is baffled and a little impatient.