A very British foreign policy coup

While most of the recrimination resulting from the tough negotiations on a new treaty has been directed at the Polish government and its fight to preserve greater voting power, there is a substantial amount of bitterness towards the UK over the changes to foreign policy in the new text.

On the Sunday before the 21-23 June summit, at which the deal on the new treaty was struck, Alberto Navarro, Spain’s EU affairs minister, fumed that proposals by the then UK foreign secretary Margaret Beckett would "totally undermine the idea of a common foreign policy". Navarro was reacting to demands from Beckett that included dropping the planned External Action Service, or EU diplomatic corps, and not letting the new EU foreign minister chair meetings of foreign ministers. Navarro said that if those demands were met "the job will be meaningless".

One senior EU diplomat said during the summit that the British were "worse than the Poles because they are trying to get back everything they didn’t like in the negotiations on the constitutional treaty", which the reform treaty seeks to replace, in particular special arrangements on the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

During the summit, the Belgian and Spanish delegations protested against what they saw as attempts to weaken the foreign policy provisions.

In the final deal these elements were preserved although the title of "EU foreign minister" was replaced with "High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy". Crucially, the new figure will be a vice-president of the European Commission and will chair foreign ministers’ meetings.

The results of the summit are in line with the UK government’s ‘red lines’, set out before the meeting. On foreign policy, the then prime minister Tony Blair said: "We will insist on maintaining our ability to conduct our own independent foreign and defence policy and we will of course maintain our [UN] Security Council seat."

An analysis* of the summit deal by Annegret Bendiek of Stiftung Wirtschaft und Politik, a German think-tank, gives a pessimistic assessment of the outcome. It points out that under the deal new articles will be added to the existing Title V of the EU treaty dealing with CFSP. These state that the provisions on CFSP "do not affect the responsibilities of the member states" for the formulation and conduct of their foreign policy nor of their national representation in third countries and international organisations.

It also explicitly states that the provisions do not affect a member state’s membership of the Security Council of the United Nations.

This paragraph is largely there for cosmetic reasons as the UK’s Security Council seat was never under threat. But the issue had been portrayed by Eurosceptic media and think-tanks as a key part of British prestige that Blair had been prepared to surrender.

Other additions include a declaration saying that CFSP is "subject to specific procedures" and shall be "defined and implemented by the European Council and the Council acting unanimously except where the treaties provide otherwise". The adoption of legislative acts shall be excluded and the European Court of Justice shall not have jurisdiction over CFSP decisions.

The report says that "with the explicit naming of the European Council and the External Relations Council which will by unanimity determine and execute Common Foreign and Security Policy, the High Representative’s ability to act will be markedly limited". It argues that the emphasis on these institutions means that the divisions of responsibility between the president of the Council and the European Commission will continue. In particular the work of the External Action Service would reflect the current divisions between the Commission and Council with the Council handling negotiations on matters relating to European Neighbourhood Policy while the Commission would deal with external economic relations. The External Action Service would not get involved in defence policy, the report argues.

The report also says that while the possibility for groups of states to proceed with further integration was main-tained, "enhanced co-operation will not lead to a core Europe on CFSP" because it is unlikely that nine member states would have the political will to form such a group.

It says that the reference to the Union having a single legal personality could make it easier for it to conclude international agreements and deal with questions of recognising certain territories.

But while the analysis is pessimistic about the prospects for developing CFSP under the treaty deal, it gives a strikingly positive assessment of the concrete achievements of EU foreign policy in recent years. It notes that the EU has been expanding its sphere of influence through the neighbour-hood policy and a central Asian strategy, while developing an energy strategy based on relations with third country suppliers such as Russia, Algeria and Norway. It has also launched military missions in the Balkans and Africa.

The summit deal did not go as far as the Union’s most integrationist member states would have liked but reflected the reservations of a crucial player in foreign policy, the UK, as well as those of Poland and the Czech Republic. While a sudden leap to a highly integrated foreign policy is unthinkable, judging the progress of EU foreign policy in concrete measures shows that the member states have achieved a remarkable degree of co-operation even if there is little unity in the debate over the best institutional arrangements.

* Die GASP nach dem ‘Fußnotengipfel’ (Common Foreign and Security Policy after the footnote summit), Annegret Bendiek, Stiftung Wirtschaft und Politik, July 2007.

While most of the recrimination resulting from the tough negotiations on a new treaty has been directed at the Polish government and its fight to preserve greater voting power, there is a substantial amount of bitterness towards the UK over the changes to foreign policy in the new text.