The European Parliament, looking to strengthen institutional ties between the US and the European Union, called this week for the creation of a transatlantic political council to co-ordinate foreign and security policy.  The council would be chaired jointly by the US secretary of state and the EU’s high representative for foreign policy and would meet at least every three months. 

The parliament also called for the establishment of a transatlantic assembly, linking the EU legislature with the US Congress, which would meet twice a year. It said the EU and US should aim for a unified transatlantic market by 2015.

The report containing these proposals was passed by 503 votes to 51 with 10 abstentions.

When he’s not busy lashing out at American economic policies, the free-falling Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek can always give free rein to the other side of his personality - mordant central European humour. Here’s an example from a press conference last week at a European Union summit in Brussels.

A reporter asked Topolanek, whose government collapsed on Monday and whose country’s EU presidency is turning into a long bad dream, why the six summit participants represented at the press conference were all men, with not a woman in sight. ‘Why, were you expecting Martians?’ the prime minister replied.

This did not go down at all well with women politicians in the European Parliament.

As Zita Gurmai, a Hungarian socialist who sits on the legislature’s committee on women’s rights and gender equality, put it: ‘If Mr Topolanek thinks it is a joke to describe half of Europe’s citizens as Martians, he should give up trying to be funny. It is bad enough that Europe, under his presidency, is not taking any extra actions to help women and men threatened by the recession, but to insult women as well is too much. I hope Mr Topolanek is embarrassed.’

Not much chance of that, one suspects.

So, that’s it, folks, Hillary Clinton has wrapped up her first visit to Brussels as US Secretary of State, and now she’s off to Geneva for a session of talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

What struck me most about Clinton’s visit to Europe was, first, how eager the Europeans were to stress that Europe and the US are singing from the same songsheet on a whole range of issues, now that Barack Obama is in the White House; and, secondly, how Clinton did nothing to pour cold water on that notion.

One of the most obvious examples is the fight against climate change, where Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Union’s external relations commissioner, went so far as to say: “Now we have the US with us.”

You could say that some of Clinton’s reassuring remarks in Brussels - “A strong Europe is a strong partner for the United States” - were just platitudes. But everything needs to be put in perspective. When George W. Bush was in the Oval Office, when Dick Cheney was vice-president and when Donald Rumsfeld was at the Pentagon, the Europeans felt unloved and to some extent unwanted.

These were times when the US was not averse to exploiting policy divisions inside the EU’s member-states, much like China and Russia have been known to do. When this sort of mischief-making is cooked up in Washington, it hurts the Europeans almost as if a father is doing it to his kids.

For the moment, then, the message is out: under Obama and Clinton, both the substance and style of foreign policy are going to be different. Unilateralism is out. Crude ideology is out. Alliance-building, a sense of responsibility and pragmatism are in. That has been the point of Clinton’s two big trips over the past couple of weeks to Asia and Europe.

But the world is a harsh place these days. Major crises can explode in unexpected places at unexpected times, as 9/11 showed. How will the new US foreign policy survive a test like that?

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just finished a question-and-answer session with a group of so-called “young Europeans” at the European Parliament in Brussels. Even though her performance lasted less than an hour, by the end she had them eating out of her hand and she received a standing ovation. 

The best moment came when she caught sight of a semi-shaven man sporting an “I love Hillary” T-shirt. She said she simply had to take a question from him because of what he was wearing. The guy turned out to be an English-speaking gay rights activist from Moldova, and he wanted to know what the Obama administration would do for the world’s gays and lesbians. Putting on her best stateswoman-like face, Clinton replied: “Human rights is and always will be one of the pillars of our foreign policy. In particular, persecution and discrimination against gays and lesbians is something we take very seriously.” Lots of applause followed.

Clinton’s performance was brilliantly executed in that she pitched her message at exactly the level the European audience wanted. They wanted to hear an American talk like a European, and that’s what they got.

Take the battle against climate change, an area where Europe - not entirely correctly - thinks it’s leading the world and the US has been lightyears behind. “Certainly the US has been negligent in facing up to our responsibilities,” she told a Belgian questioner. “We are making up the best we can for lost time.”

Or take her answer to an Irishwoman who asked if the US found it difficult to understand the complexity of European Union institutions. Yes, she said, but “I often find Europeans confused about the way the United States government operates… Democracies must be careful that we don’t become so process-driven and overwhelmed by the procedural aspects of decision-making that we are in effect paralysed.”

That reply got a big round of applause from her audience, who appeared mostly to be brainy people working for the EU who would know all about things getting too “process-driven”.

Of course, her best line came at the start when she called Europe a “miracle” because of the way it had overcome two world wars and a century of fanaticism and put itself on the path of peaceful, prosperous integration. “Europe is enjoying its longest period of peace since Roman times,” she said, displaying a grasp of 2,000 years of history that is just the kind of thing Europeans think the average American doesn’t have a clue about.

Clinton was the highest-ranking US visitor to the European Parliament since President Ronald Reagan in 1985. It was a clever move to go there on her first trip as secretary of state to Europe. But that’s what you’d expect from such a seasoned political operative.

Reporters are a fairly cynical lot - even we “interested pencils”. But when Hillary Clinton finished her first press conference in Europe as US Secretary of State a little while ago, I heard laughter and a short ripple of applause from the audience.

She got the laughs at the end of a lengthy and serious explanation of why anti-missile defence systems would be important for the US and its allies in the 21st century (rogue regimes and networks of terrorists will be tomorrow’s problem, not traditional nation-states). Noticing that her audience had gone quiet in apparent contemplation of the missile warfare awaiting us, she said brightly: ”And on that happy note…!”  The mood lifted and the press conference ended.

She got the ripple of applause for what was a very assured performance on a range of foreign policy issues - Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, and the future of Nato. It is no exaggeration to say that she didn’t put a foot wrong, either in stating US policy or in formulating her sentences gramatically. The aphasiac era of US leadership has definitely come to a close.

You might say, well, what do you expect from one of the US’s most able political campaigners? True, true. Still, it’s reassuring to know that she has such a firm grasp of the issues.

There is one point I would make, however. When she outlined her thinking on Afghanistan and Russia, the detail was identical - and I really mean, identical - to the policy points that had been set out by a senior US official to a select group of reporters in Brussels last night. I know, because I was one of the reporters.

On Afghanistan, the senior official talked about the need for an increased and integrated military and civilian approach. So did Clinton today. On Russia, the senior official talked about dealing pragmatically with Russia on areas where co-operation could be productive, such as counter-terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, anti-piracy efforts and so on. So did Clinton today.

Depending on your viewpoint, you could say this tells you that Clinton is sticking carefully and perhaps a little unambitiously to an agreed script. Or you could say it shows that the Obama administration knows what it wants to achieve in foreign policy, and it’s great that everyone is already completely on-message.

More tomorrow on what is being billed as a live televised meeting between Clinton and some “young Europeans” (er, is this direct diplomacy, or a legacy of the 2008 US election campaign?).

The corridors of Nato are starting to echo with praise for US secretary of state Hillary Clinton as she wraps up her first official talks at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels. “She’s started well, eh?” Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign minister, said just now.

Kouchner said Clinton’s trip to the Middle East, just before she arrived in Brussels, had gone done well with other Nato ministers because “she talked with everyone… At Jerusalem and Ramallah she displayed a determination to show that she wasn’t the same as the previous [Republican] administration.”

France, of course, has been an occasionally quirky Nato ally and withdrew its military forces from the joint alliance command in 1966 - though that decision is expected to be reversed at a Nato summit next month in Strasbourg and Kehl, Germany. In any case, Kouchner praised Clinton for “speaking to her allies, and not just to her allies - she’s just sent two high-level envoys to Syria”.

In general, Nato’s European members are enjoying the feeling that the Obama administration is not only paying attention to them, but is pursuing a style of diplomacy much more in tune with their instincts and traditions. Clinton’s diplomacy will be hard-headed and driven by US national interests, for sure, but it will also be pragmatic and will aim at keeping foreign policy free of naive moralistic constructions - one of the principal European criticisms of foreign policy under President George W. Bush.

“She was warmly welcomed by all the foreign ministers,” said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary-general. “She was here as much to listen as to inform.”

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato’s secretary-general, has just told a news conference that the alliance’s foreign ministers have agreed to resume high-level ministerial contacts with Russia. He made no mention of Lithuania’s objections, and no reporter managed to raise the matter in a question. 
 
But there was perhaps just a hint that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her colleagues paid some attention to what the Lithuanians were saying. Because what the foreign ministers have agreed is that high-level contacts with Russia should restart “as soon as possible” after a Nato summit in early April in Strasbourg and Kehl, Germany.
 
That indeterminate timeframe could be interpreted as a concession to Lithuania’s demand that Nato leaders should discuss the issue at greater length before resuming the contacts with Russia.
 
Maybe we’ll know more when Clinton holds her own news conference in a couple of hours.
 
In the meantime, everyone is beavering away here in the press area at Nato headquarters under a big red sign that says: “No classified discussion in this area.” And when I say everyone, I don’t just mean “interested pencils”.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s inaugural working visit to Europe has run into its first setback. At Nato’s headquarters outside central Brussels, she and other alliance foreign ministers have been discussing how to start a new era in relations with Russia. Last night, according to US officials, it seemed a sure bet that everyone would agree to restore high-level ministerial contacts with Moscow - they were suspended after last August’s Russian-Georgian war.
 
But this afternoon it has become clear that Lithuania is raising objections. The Lithuanians want the issue to be debated at greater length at a summit of the 26 Nato countries’ leaders in Strasbourg and Kehl, Germany, on April 3-4. Other countries are impatient to get the process started sooner rather than later. 
 
The problem is that Nato works by consensus, rather than by majority voting. So at the moment the Lithuanians can block everything if they choose. Some will remember that they did something similar inside the European Union not long ago, resisting the appeals of other EU states to open talks on a long-term partnership agreement with Russia.
 
How this is sorted out will be the first serious test of Clinton’s diplomatic skills.