EU impotent in face of Middle East crisis

Rival interests stymie action on foreign-policy crises. CATHERINE FIELD reports.

PARIS - The European Union is feeling familiar sensations of worry and frustration as the latest Israeli-Palestinian crisis sends tremors across the Middle East.

By its own logic, Western Europe should be a big player in the Middle East, especially now that United States influence over the parties seems to be ebbing, leaving the region to cast around desperately for a new broker.

And there is a clear interest in intervening. The Arab world is so close to the EU that any upheaval there can resound swiftly in the form of higher energy prices, discontent among Europe's Muslim minority or waves of economic migrants washed up on Europe's shores.

"We would like to play a more important role at this moment, in which the situation is more delicate than ever since the beginning of the peace process," the EU's high representative for security and foreign policy, Javier Solana, said wistfully after attending the Mideast summit in Egypt.

The reality, though, is otherwise. In the Middle East, as in Kosovo, Chechnya, East Timor or virtually every other big foreign-policy crisis of the past two years, the 15-member EU has been a sad and humiliating failure.

In every case, it has either left leadership to the US, failed to act decisively because of rival national interests or blithely hoped that the crisis would recede.

The EU is a diplomatic dwarf with a large cheque book, says Willem van der Geest, director of the European Institute for Asian Studies in Brussels.

"There is a clear disproportion between the economic importance and the political importance."

The EU is powerless mainly because foreign policy and defence remain the preserve of national capitals.

That means it cannot do much other than issue anodyne statements and offer, as was the case in the overthrow of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, economic aid as an enticement for change.

The EU has tried to improve matters by naming Solana, a former Nato Secretary-General, to attend big international meetings and mediate in major disputes.

He works in cooperation with External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten, who as the last Governor of Hong Kong is another heavyweight in foreign policy.

But both men are deeply frustrated in their jobs. Their lack of sway over national capitals has been cruelly highlighted in recent weeks by decisions by Britain and Germany to establish ties with North Korea separately rather than as an EU-wide move, and by open discord among members about whether to set a date for admitting Poland and Hungary to the club.

Two of the biggest causes of the EU's weakness in foreign policy are Britain and France, Europe's biggest former colonial powers and the only EU members to have permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council.

More than any other EU country, they still believe they have a national role to play on the world stage. They are loath to give Brussels their sovereignty over foreign policy, one of the dwindling areas of decision-making where there is still a national right of veto.

Even so, pressure is mounting for the national veto to be scrapped or weakened as EU leaders ponder a raft of changes that must be made in the next few years.

The EU has to overhaul its institutions in order to admit up to a dozen countries clamouring for admission to its ranks. The reforms must be decided at a summit in Nice next month.

In a speech to the European Parliament on October 3, Commission President Roman Prodi reminded deputies of "our tragic inability to act in the Balkans war, precisely because of the fragmentation of our decision-making process.

"It is is not because of action that we have lost credibility, but our inability to act," he said bitterly.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on a visit to Warsaw three days later, talked up the idea of Europe as a "superpower" projecting "economic and political strength."

But it should be a "superpower, not a superstate," he said, signalling Britain's opposition to surrendering power to Brussels or alienating US interest in Nato.

Similar doubts float over the plans to set up an EU force of 60,000 troops for international peacekeeping and human rights missions by 2003.

Big questions remain about the force's command structure, national contributions and political oversight.

Without clear answers, the force could become disastrously bogged down, a symbol of European impotence rather than action.

Herald Online feature: Middle East

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Map

Middle East Daily

Arabic News

Arabic Media Internet Network

Jerusalem Post

Israel Wire

US Department of State - Middle East Peace Process