EU opts for feebleness

European leaders have decided, with their choice of two nonentities as the EU’s figureheads, that they do not want the union to be a serious player on the world stage. To those who had hoped for more ambition, this was disappointing. It had been said that the relative importance of the two posts would be determined by the personalities who first held them. The choices that were finally made seem to reflect a determination by EU leaders to keep the EU, as such, subordinate to the national vanities of members states. Eurosceptics who want EU institutions to have as little content as possible have reason to be pleased.

In one crucial respect the new set-up will be a relief. Among all the media comments about how low-profile the two new top figures are, at least everyone seems to agree that they are competent. That will make a welcome change from the embarrassment of having the oaf Javier Solana as the face of the Common European foreign and security policy. Having been NATO Secretary General, he actually did have an international profile of sorts. It just goes to show that an impressive-looking CV can mean very little. It is quite possible to have done a string of responsible jobs, giving the appearance of great experience, but to have done them all badly.

Behind the EU’s latest choices is the reality that the union’s big countries still want to conduct foreign policy themselves on all the issues that count. Paris, London and Berlin never allowed Solana to take a significant role on any important issue, such as Middle East policy, for example, or Turkey. Solana was left to pick up the crumbs that national governments did not care much about, notably ex-Yugoslavia. Perhaps Solana will be best remembered for his doomed efforts to stave of Montenegrin independence, pressurising Podgorica to join a re-formed, very loose, unworkable union with Serbia dubbed “Solania” by Balkan wags.

But the shame is that a Europe that is no more than the sum of its member-state parts has persistently failed to count in the international big league as it could. It is not only in the Balkans that the EU continues to be ineffective, its significant resources not matched by political clout. During the growing crisis that preceded the Russian invasion of Georgia we had the spectacle of the Foreign Minister of Slovenia, supported by the Baltic states, attempting a diplomatic intervention, to the hardly disguised irritation of the bigger European states. That the EU appeared to do better a little later, when the invasion came, was because by then a big EU country, France, headed by an energetic president, led the European efforts. The episode actually demonstrated again that in foreign policy it is not the EU that counts, but that if Europe has any role at all, it is down to its larger members. Even when the EU big beasts, France, Germany and the UK, act jointly, as over Iran’s nuclear programme, their efforts seem to be no more than tolerated by the US for as long as it cannot think of anything more effective.

So most likely the EU will continue to have no effective voice collectively, and the European presence in international affairs will continue to be the small voices of the three largest members, occasionally trying to adopt common positions, and on such occasions annoying all the smaller EU members. And we will have to wait for another big new institutional re-jigging to see whether EU leaders can finally turn the aspiration of EU influence into reality. For the time-being, if there are any more crises in Europe’s backyard, effective action from the EU remains unlikely.