EU officials to meet Bush amid crisis
Senior European Union officials will meet US President George Bush in Washington today amid uncertainty about the impact that the crisis gripping the 25-nation bloc could have on transatlantic relations.
The leaders’ failure last Friday to agree on a budget for the next few years and signal that the EU draft constitution remains a viable undertaking has saddled Europe with a crisis of confidence.
“Well beyond the borders of the European Union, there will be concern, not that the EU is now facing some kind of unravelling or disintegration, but that it will be paralysed as a major force in world affairs,” said John Palmer, political director of the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think tank.
He said the crisis of confidence would have particular importance in the US.
“Opinion in Washington seems divided between those who want to see a more united and effective EU and those who openly celebrate its failure to act as an effective player on the global scene,” Palmer said in an assessment of the crisis posted on his thinktank’s website.
He said the EU crisis would be closely followed in Asia, Latin America and Africa, where governments “will fear the possible weakening of influence of an ally in the cause of a more effective system of law-based, global governance”.
The EU delegation travelling to Washington is led by Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose country holds the EU rotating presidency until the end of the month.
Juncker will meet Bush at the White House. The delegation also includes Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU External Relations Commissioner, and Javier Solana, the security affairs chief.
EU sources said Juncker, who chaired the EU summit, will make clear in his talks in Washington that there is a crisis but not one that will aggravate transatlantic ties at a time when both sides are working hard to improve relations.
Bush made a bury-the-hatchet visit to Europe in February to close the book on intense divisions over the war in Iraq. The two sides agreed to cohost a conference on Iraq’s economic and political development that will be held in Brussels on Wednesday.
The EU-US meeting had been scheduled before French and Dutch voters rejected the draft EU constitution in votes on May 29 and June 1, setting off a crisis over ever more integration that only got worse when the EU leaders tangled over farm spending as part of a budget deal for the 2007-2013 period.
EU officials say the transatlantic relationship is so vast – and crucial to global peace – that it must not be held hostage to the future of the constitution.
In recent months, the EU and the US have moved closer on Iraq and stayed united on the way forward to peace in the Middle East.
Crucially, Europe and the US also boast the world’s largest bilateral trade relationship. They both account for 20% of each other’s bilateral trade which now stands at 1.23 billion dollars (£683 million) a day.
Investment links are even more substantial. Two-way investments amount to over 1.845 trillion dollars, with each side employing directly and indirectly about six million people in the trade.
