On Tuesday a numerically impressive delegation of Europeans will be in Washington for the first formal US-European Union summit since Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration last January.  Fredrik Reinfeldt, Sweden’s prime minister, will be there in his capacity as leader of the country that holds the EU’s rotating presidency.  So will Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister.  So will Javier Solana, the EU’s head of foreign policy.  So will Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU’s external affairs commissioner.  So will José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president - and from what I hear, a few other bigwigs are going along for the ride as well.

This is quite a turnout.  It would be nice to think it reflects an exceptionally warm and constructive relationship between the Obama administration and its EU allies.  But as a timely new report by the European Council on Foreign Relations points out, the real picture is less rosy.  “To Americans, these summits are all too typical of the European love of process over substance, and a European compulsion for everyone to crowd into the room regardless of efficiency,” write the authors, Nick Witney and Jeremy Shapiro.

In 2001 President George W. Bush was so taken aback by his first experience of EU-style summitry that he halved the frequency of the US-European meetings to once a year.  Last April, however, the Europeans managed to entice Obama into visiting Prague for a session with all 27 EU heads of state and government.  “Administration sources are frank that Obama’s encounter… left him incredulous,” say Witney and Shapiro.

One sympathises.  Even Europeans know that their inability or reluctance to put a sensible limit on the number of people who represent them is a weakness.  How much worse it must be for a practical, results-oriented kind of guy like Obama.  He would surely like nothing better than a summit where the Europeans speak with one voice and don’t need a dozen limousines to get them to the White House.

But it’s a problem that shows no sign of going away.  Take the G20.  This increasingly important group, which brings together the world’s leading industrialised and developing countries, does not in fact have 20 faces around the table but 24, of which eight are European.  It’s much the same at the International Monetary Fund.  And when the EU started formal consultations on exchange rates and other issues with China’s leaders two years ago, they sent three people to Beijing - Jean-Claude Trichet, the European Central Bank president; Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister and the head of the 16-strong group of eurozone finance ministers; and Joaquín Almunia, the EU monetary affairs commissioner.  That might just have been acceptable, except that a separate European delegation was in Beijing at the same time for a EU-China summit, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was also flying around China doing his own thing.

Will the situation improve once the EU has its first full-time president, one of whose tasks will be to represent the EU in external relations?  Unlikely.  At times I have the impression that the regular bilateral summits with the US, China, Russia, India, Japan and so on don’t even mean a great deal to EU leaders.

I well remember a EU-South Africa summit held in Bordeaux in July 2008.  Sarkozy, who represented the EU because France held the bloc’s rotating presidency, hosted Thabo Mbeki, the former South African president.  But Sarkozy left the summit early because he had a more pressing engagement in Paris on the same day.  With whom?  Barack Obama… then a mere presidential candidate.

As Tony Blair’s chances of becoming the European Union’s first full-time president fade, so the chances go up that David Miliband will be the EU’s next foreign policy supremo.  This is the picture emerging on the second day of the EU summit in Brussels.

The killer blow to Blair’s prospects was delivered by Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, who let it be known that she would prefer the EU’s first permanent president to come from one of the EU’s smaller states.  By definition, this rules out Blair.

German officials say she has nothing against Blair personally.  But in this matter Merkel’s voice is perhaps the most important among all the 27 leaders present.  Germany is not putting forward a candidate either for the presidency or for the foreign policy post.  It is, however, the EU’s biggest country and its paymaster.  Merkel is therefore the honest broker, the swing vote, the kingmaker - however you want to put it.

Meanwhile, Blair has lost the support of José Sócrates, Portugal’s prime minister, and of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister.  Both are socialists and both think Europe’s centre-left should focus not on getting the presidency but the foreign policy job.

That is why the summit chatter about Miliband is getting ever more excited.  Looking around Europe, one does not see too many foreign policy stars on the centre-left side of the political firmament.  And check out this editorial in Thursday’s Le Monde on Miliband.  It describes him as “the young and brilliant foreign secretary” and praises his commitment to the EU, contrasting it with the views of William Hague, the Tory shadow foreign secretary, whom it accuses of “an almost pathological europhobia”.

With Le Monde on your side, how can you lose?

With a mere 27 members (all European heads of state or government, admittedly), the electorate that will pick the European Union’s first full-time president and new foreign policy high representative is even smaller than the conclave of Roman Catholic cardinals that chooses a new pope.  But this isn’t stopping other European busybodies from trying to muscle in on the decision.

Take the main political groups in the European Parliament, for example.  They have no formal say in the matter whatsoever.  Nonetheless, the parliament’s socialist group appears confident that it has an informal understanding with the centre-right European People’s Party that the full-time EU presidency should go to a EPP politician and the foreign policy post should go to a socialist.

Well, I’m glad that’s all clear, then.  Perhaps Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and the 24 other EU leaders who will actually make the choices shouldn’t bother to show up for tomorrow’s summit in Brussels - or for a follow-up summit in November, when the decisions are likely to be taken.

Still, for what it’s worth, here is the shortlist of six candidates that the socialists are proposing for the EU foreign policy job, currently held by Javier Solana of Spain:

a) Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s outgoing foreign minister, who suffered a crushing defeat in last month’s German elections at the hands of Chancellor Angela Merkel;

b) David Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, who says he isn’t available for the job, not least because his government wants Tony Blair to be the EU’s first president;

c) Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain’s foreign minister since 2004, and a former EU special representative for the Middle East peace process;

d) Elisabeth Guigou, a member of the French parliament who served as France’s EU affairs minister from 1990 to 1993;

e) Alfred Gusenbauer, who was chancellor of Austria for less than two years in 2007-2008 before his term ended, in the words of the German news magazine Der Spiegel, “in fiasco amid infighting, tactical errors and his own over-estimation of himself”;

f) Adrian Severin, a former Romanian foreign minister who, as previously noted in this blog, is the winner of a mysterious “Man of the 20th Century Award”.

There are many reasons why the socialist list is not to to be taken seriously.  I shall mention just two.  First, the German government has already named its next member of the European Commission as Günther Oettinger, prime minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg.  Because the EU foreign policy chief will automatically be a Commission member, and because each country is entitled to only one Commission seat, it is impossible for Steinmeier to get the foreign policy job.

Secondly, why would a man who has been Man of the 20th Century stoop so low as to take on the menial task of running European foreign policy?

There is something fishy about the race to fill two of the biggest jobs going in Europe - the first long-term presidency of the European Union, and the post of EU foreign policy chief.  The closer the EU gets to decision time, the more various unofficial candidates are ruling themselves out or running into difficulties.  As far as concerns the presidency, the latest person to say she doesn’t want to be considered for the job is Mary Robinson, the former Irish head of state.

In some ways, it’s a shame.  The politically independent Robinson commands much respect across Europe and beyond - more than certain candidates I could mention from Belgium and Luxembourg.  It would also be a clever move on the part of the EU’s 27 leaders to put a woman in the presidency and so boost the EU’s profile in the eyes of its citizens.

Still, Robinson has done the right thing.  In truth, she didn’t really have much choice.  The point about the future EU president is that he or she must be someone whom the other leaders around the table recognise as one of their own kind.  In other words, he or she must be by instinct a full-blooded politician and by career profile a sitting or a former head of government.  Outsiders such as Robinson would find it much harder to control a meeting of 27 national leaders or to broker the necessary deals among the big players.

So who will it be?  All I would say at this stage is: “Beware of anyone who claims to have inside knowledge.”  Of course, there have already been some fairly spirited exchanges - one of the most extraordinary being the warning by William Hague, the UK Conservative party’s shadow foreign secretary, to other EU countries that the appointment of Tony Blair, the Labour ex-premier, would be regarded by a future Tory government as an unfriendly act.

But all the contacts among governments have so far remained informal.  While Germany was conducting its coalition negotiations on forming a new government, everything was totally up in the air, because Chancellor Angela Merkel could not commit herself to a particular candidate.  This gave President Nicolas Sarkozy of France some wiggle room to imply that his support for Blair might not quite be of the 100 per cent variety.

Now that the German coalition talks have reached a successful conclusion, we will probably see more momentum in the discussions over the two new jobs.  But one vital point is still undecided - does the EU want a dynamic, high-profile president or a less visible but bureaucratically efficient figure?  At the moment, the balance of opinion among the 27 countries appears to favour the second type.  But an awful lot will depend on which way Merkel and Sarkozy go.

Even before he was elected as president of France in 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy made it crystal-clear that he didn’t want Turkey to join the European Union - ever.  Now concerns are growing in Brussels that Sarkozy is contemplating a formal Franco-German initiative next year to offer Turkey a “privileged partnership” instead of, as now, the long-term prospect of full EU membership.

The idea of a “privileged partnership” has been around for a good few years.  Sarkozy likes it, and so does Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic party.  It also appeals to Angela Merkel, the CDU chancellor.  However, Merkel has up to now taken a nuanced approach, recognising that Germany, along with other EU countries, recognised Turkey as an official candidate for membership in 1999.  A responsible country cannot just wriggle out of agreements made in good faith, Merkel believes. 

The difference now is that, after last month’s German election, the Social Democrats - more sympathetic to Turkey’s aspirations - are out of government and have been replaced by the Free Democrats, whose position on Turkey is more ambiguous.  The balance of opinion in Berlin is changing.  Sarkozy may try to seize the opportunity to line up the new German government behind the concept of the ”privileged partnership”, according to EU policymakers.

Needless to say, Turkey would dismiss an offer along these lines as an insult.  There is no legal foundation for a “privileged partnership”, says Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s chief negotiator on EU matters.   You are either in the EU or not in the EU.  You cannot be half-pregnant, Bagis once told me.

The US would undoubtedly dislike such an initiative, too.  Ignoring criticism that it’s none of their business, both Democratic and Republican administrations have always encouraged the EU to accept Turkey as a full member.

Alas, Turkey’s EU membership bid is in serious trouble, anyway.  The European Commission tried to put a brave face on matters this week in its annual report on Turkey.  But the inescapable truth is that out of the 35 negotiation chapters, or policy areas, that a country needs to complete in order to join the EU, Turkey has opened 11, of which only one has been provisionally closed.  Another 12 chapters have been either formally frozen by the EU, or informally blocked by France with support from others opposed to Turkey’s bid.  The entire process risks grinding to a halt.

In December EU leaders will discuss Turkey’s failure to heed their calls to open its ports and airports to ships and aircraft from the Greek Cypriot-controlled government of Cyprus.  In theory they could take a harsh line and more or less abandon Turkey’s EU entry talks.

I doubt this will happen - Sweden, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency until December 31, is friendly towards Turkey, and many other countries think it would be crazy to adopt such a position just when negotiations on a Cyprus settlement are reaching a critical moment.

But towards the end of the first half of 2010, the picture may well look different.  April is the key month.  If the Cyprus talks are deadlocked by the time of next April’s Turkish Cypriot presidential election, and if he can get Germany on board, Sarkozy may be tempted to unveil his “privileged partnership” proposal.

In December 1984 western governments detected the first signs of potentially far-reaching change in the Soviet Union when Mikhail Gorbachev, three months before he took over as Communist party leader, went on a trip to London.  Gorbachev greatly impressed Margaret Thatcher, the then prime minister, who saw him as an articulate, vigorous man with whom, famously, she could “do business”.

Is a Gorbachev moment about to happen in European-Chinese relations?  In two weeks’ time, Xi Jinping, China’s vice-president, is due to pay a visit to Europe and, among other activities, spend some time at the European Commission in Brussels.  The parallels with December 1984 are intriguing. Continue reading "A “Gorbachev moment” in European-Chinese relations?"

Like it or not, the European Union faces the distinct possibility that the latest United Nations-mediated effort at producing a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus dispute will fail.  From a EU perspective, would that be a disaster?  Or just a bit depressing and annoying?  Disaster is a strong word, but the consequences of failure would unquestionably be serious.

Talks between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots have been going on for the past 12 months, and the next round is due to be held on Thursday - having been postponed for a week, because of a row over some Greek Cypriot pilgrims who were trying to visit a church in Turkish Cypriot territory.

Nothing much has changed in the Cyprus dispute since 1974, when Turkish forces occupied the north of the island in response to a Greek-inspired coup aimed at enosis, or the union of Cyprus with Greece.  Turkish troops and settlers are still there in the north, but the Greek Cypriots control the internationally recognised government of the island.  What is more, they secured entry into the EU in 2004.  As a result, their 26 EU partners are virtually compelled to support them in anything related to the Cyprus dispute, even if some EU governments privately fume at Greek Cypriot behaviour.

Greek Cypriot public opinion seems to take the view that it would not matter much if the talks were to break down.  When the most recent UN-brokered deal was put to the two communities in referendums in 2004, the Turkish Cypriots approved it by 65 to 35 per cent, but the Greek Cypriots rejected it by a crushing 76 to 24 per cent.

The Greek Cypriots should stop being complacent, however, and read the excellent report published this week by the Independent Commission on Turkey, a panel chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Finland’s 2008 Nobel peace prize winner.  The report describes the current peace talks as probably “the last chance for a federal settlement”.  Put another way, if the talks collapse, the Greek Cypriots will be looking at a future in which Turkey’s armed forces maintain a presence on the island for the indefinite future.  Is that what they really want?

A second unwelcome consequence would be that co-operation between the EU and Nato, so important for transatlantic relations, would continue to be blocked by differences between Cyprus and Turkey.  Lastly, the collapse of the Cyprus negotiations could torpedo Turkey’s bid to join the EU.

Here it is important that certain EU member-states, above all France and Germany, which are sceptical about Turkish entry into the bloc, show responsibility.  It would be all too easy to use the collapse of the talks as an excuse to punish Turkey and bury its membership aspirations forever.  But that would be unwise.  Holding out the prospect of membership is one of the most important levers the EU possesses to steer Turkish domestic reforms in a positive direction.

If the worst happens, and the Cyprus talks break down, the EU must still keep alive Turkey’s EU accession process.

After the fall of communism in central and eastern Europe, one compelling argument for bringing the region into the European Union was that the experience of prosperity, democracy and everyday multinational co-operation would ease national and ethnic tensions there.  Who knew, perhaps eventually it would get rid of them altogether, just as France and Germany were gradually reconciled after the second world war?

A flare-up of tensions last month between Slovakia and Hungary will serve as proof, to those western Europeans who were always hostile to enlargement, that such hopes were premature.  Worse still, it will confirm them in their opinion that, by admitting the two countries in 2004, all the EU succeeded in doing was to trap a nasty virus inside its own borders.

They are wrong, in my view, but that doesn’t mean that the Slovak-Hungarian tensions should be glossed over.  The spark for the trouble was the Slovak government’s decision to deter Hungary’s head of state from attending a statue-unveiling ceremony in the ethnic Hungarian-populated part of southern Slovakia.  The statue was of Saint Stephen, Hungary’s first king, who ruled 1,000 years ago.

To many Slovaks, Hungary’s attempt to send its president to the ceremony marked yet another example of interference in a region that Hungary had ruled since the Middle Ages, until forced to cede the area after the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s collapse in 1918.  To Hungarians, however, the origins of the episode lie in the anti-Hungarian outlook of Slovakia’s coalition government, manifested in a new language law which stipulates that only Slovak can be used in most public institutions.  Thousands of ethnic Hungarians went on the streets last week to demonstrate against the law.

All this is reminiscent of the Slovak-Hungarian tensions that persisted throughout the 1990s, especially after Slovakia became an independent state in 1993 in the wake of Czechoslovakia’s break-up.  Sixteen years ago, I spent some time in the part of Slovakia where the latest troubles broke out and, re-reading what I wrote back then, it is tempting to conclude that not a great deal has changed in the meantime.

And yet that is not really so.  There are ultra-nationalist elements in Slovakia, and they are even represented in the country’s coalition government.  But overall Slovakia is more confident in its statehood.  It joined the eurozone this year and has no interest in fomenting instability in its region.  Meanwhile, Hungary has every right to take an interest in the status of ethnic Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries.  Perhaps sometimes Hungary oversteps the mark in a rather disconcerting way, but there is never any suggestion of violence or attempted subversion.

Tensions of this kind have such deep roots that it would be silly to expect them to disappear as a result of five years of EU membership.  But in the end, the chances that they really will disappear will be much higher if Slovakia and Hungary are in the EU than outside.