Leaders make the best of a bad job

Date: 18/12/03

The Brussels summit wasn't a total failure, as the unanimous agreement on a new security strategy proved. David Cronin reports

IT WAS eclipsed by the stalemate on the draft EU constitution. But last weekend's Brussels summit did achieve an important breakthrough for the Union's foreign policy.

For the first time, it is now underpinned by a "security strategy". The text, unanimously endorsed by EU leaders, reads like a paean to multilateralism.

Mainly written by Robert Cooper, director-general for external affairs at the Council of Ministers and former advisor to UK premier Tony Blair, it firmly commits the Union to upholding international law through bodies such as the UN.

"We want international organizations, regimes and treaties to be effective in confronting threats to international peace and security and must therefore be ready to act when their rules are broken," it says.

It also attempts to press the right buttons as part of the post-war rapprochement between countries which backed and opposed the US-led military action in Iraq - by wedding the EU to the fight against poverty, the quest for peace in the Middle East and the development of a stronger military capacity.

Significantly, the document has been watered down from a version presented to EU leaders at the Thessaloniki summit in June. That held out the possibility that the EU could resort to "pre-emptive engagement" of a similar nature to that which the Bush administration launched in Iraq.

However, "pre-emptive" has now been replaced by another "p" word - "preventive".

The changes were made at the behest of the Franco-German alliance that vociferously opposed the war in Iraq. The doctrine now simply contends the EU needs to "be able to act before countries around us deteriorate, when signs of proliferation [of weapons of mass destruction] are detected and before humanitarian emergencies arise".

Holistic approach to problems

It steers well clear of such controversial concepts as pursuing regime change in states belonging to George W. Bush's perceived "axis of evil".

In an analysis of the security strategy, Nicole Gnesotto, director of the European Union Institute for Strategic Studies in Paris, argues that the EU is taking a more holistic approach to the world's manifold problems than the US. The references to the vast destruction wrought by poverty and disease in the paper, she says, indicate that "in the European view, the awful consequences of badly regulated globalization present challenges just as direct military threats do".

"While the Europeans may identify the same types of threats as the US, they are, as a whole, much less ideological in their perception of this new strategic situation. The notion of "rogue states" is quite simply missing from European thinking, which is much more focused on the risks presented by "failing states" and bad governance. And there is no consensus on the idea of an axis of evil or terrorism defined as one unique phenomenon that is identical everywhere in the world."

By contrast, anti-poverty activists argue the security strategy is not comprehensive enough. Oxfam criticizes the paper for focusing on weapons of mass destruction, while not paying adequate heed to the unregulated arms trade, which it blames for fuelling some 40 conflicts throughout the planet.

Other points agreed at the summit:

• Romania and Bulgaria were encouraged to speed up reforms required for membership so that they can conclude negotiations on joining next year
• Italy finally succeeded in its attempts to win the EU food safety agency for Parma - the UK is to host an EU police academy, Greece a computer security authority, Finland gets the European chemicals agency and Sweden a disease research centre. The European Maritime Safety Agency, set up in the wake of the Erika and Prestige tanker disasters, will be based in Lisbon, Portugal.
• The European Action for Growth programme, due to pump some €62 billion into infrastructure and research projects, was approved
• Turkey was applauded for its reform efforts but implored to take an active role in pursuing the reunification of Cyprus, and
• EU justice ministers were asked to complete their deliberations on the proposed border-management agency so that it can be up and running in January 2005.

Article reports on the items that were approved at the European Council in Brussels, 12-13 December 2003, including the unanimous agreement on a new European Security Strategy.