Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-16-Speech-3-049"
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"en.20010516.3.3-049"2
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". – Mr President, I am pleased to have this opportunity to discuss transatlantic relations with the European Parliament. There is a lot of talk about EU-US cooperation. There are quite a few critical voices in that chorus and we read frequently about this or that cloud casting a shadow across the relationship. But in all this, I would argue, we fail to recognise the unique nature and the unique strength of the transatlantic bond, so this is an excellent opportunity to put the record straight.
The architecture is described in terms of strategic themes forming the core of the transatlantic agenda. It is a big core, because the relationship is so very wide-ranging. We identified eight such strategic themes, ranging from the emerging international security challenges, globalisation and the multilateral trading system, through energy issues and consumer protection, to the digital economy and the fight against crime.
These strategic themes should not be seen as a selection of priorities, but rather as overarching principles which will remain valid over several years and provide a framework for specific issues and priorities to be tackled over a shorter time period. The plumbing part of the communication looks at the so-called NTA structures and the multitude of meetings which take place within them at political and official level.
Our message is simple: fewer meetings, more substance and more political leadership. The first two are related to the latter, but we want political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to set the priorities and challenges their respective administrations should meet and to set deadlines for meeting those challenges as well. This will only happen if there is real business to be done and that will only be the case if we make the meetings more focussed.
It is an ambitious goal. The new transatlantic agenda process is like a supertanker, or maybe it is better to call it a mixed-bulk carrier. It can carry a large and varied cargo all at once. We need to ensure its design is streamlined, simple and robust to ensure smooth passage and minimum maintenance. As the honourable Members can tell, I have been thinking much about the Korean shipbuilding industry recently and its impact on global trade. At the helm you should not spin the wheel widely from side-to-side, but adjust the course with small, but well-measured turns.
Let me end where I started. The transatlantic link in my view is our most important relationship. It is important for the European Union and for the United States and indeed for the world. Of course, we will not always agree on everything. I am not thinking just of trade issues, which should always be put in the wider perspective of the colossal trade flows, more than a USD 1 billion a day, which benefit both our regions, but also of more fundamental issues like environmental protection, on which the minister spoke, and capital punishment. There are no easy answers, no magic wands to make our differences disappear. However, on the larger range of issues, where the United States and the European Union work together, we do set between us the international agenda. By working together across the Atlantic we can advance our interests, those of our countries and their citizens, and contribute to global security more generally.
This debate also gives me an opportunity to set out in a few words why the Commission recently presented a communication on reinforcing the transatlantic relationship and how we would hope to see that initiative followed up in Parliament and the Council.
The 1995 new transatlantic agenda shifted the focus of our relationship from one of consultation to joint action. Since then EU-US cooperation has broadened enormously and now embraces virtually every area of EU activity, and rightly so. We share so much with the US in terms of vision, history and values. With no one else do we have such a wide range of common interests and such a strong economic base to build on. We do not, as I shall go on to say, agree about everything, but the fact that we agree about so much means that there is always a distorting focus on the minority of issues where we do not see eye to eye.
I do not want to launch here into an inventory of EU-US cooperation. My point here is different. It is that we have an interest in virtually every area of activity of the Union to establish close and cooperative relations with the United States. I have no sympathy for anti-Americanism or anti-anyone-else-ism for that matter. I feel under no compunction to define my Europeanness in terms of my attitude to the United States of America. That sort of attitude betrays a terrible lack of self-confidence in what it means to be a European.
In my specific area of responsibility, the added value and positive results are obvious in our close partnership with the Balkans. The Minister also spoke, quite rightly, of the Middle East and Korea, and we could have continued like that and mentioned many other parts of the world. The European Union and the US are also principal partners in addressing the new cross-cutting issues on the international agenda. Communicable diseases, organised crime, drug and people trafficking, money laundering: all these manifestations of the dark side of globalisation require our concerted action and they get our joint attention. Access to medicines, for example, has been lifted to the top of the agenda in EU-US relations as well as in multilateral fora.
That brings me to another important point about the transatlantic partnership. It would be sad, serious and a terrible irony if the emergence of Europe as a global actor in a multilateral world coincided with the turning of some American minds towards unilateralism. I hope that will not happen. It would be the reversal of the trends of the last 50 years. I had been greatly encouraged by the new Administration's commitment to maintaining America's vital role in world affairs. President Bush chose to emphasise the point in his inaugural speech, when he said, and I quote "America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice". Obviously these hopes were somewhat deflated, as the Minister said, by the subsequent statement indicating that the Administration has no interest in implementing the Kyoto Protocol. This rightly met with dismay in Europe and elsewhere, including in parts of the United States, but clearly we must not let disappointment turn into fruitless confrontation. It is vital that we persuade the United States to embrace and maintain its multilateral commitments and we in the European Union can best help to do this, not by finger wagging and moralising, but by facing up to our own responsibilities and following through our own commitments with our financial assistance and other policy instruments. When the United States and the European Union work together, we set the international agenda. If we are divided, the opportunity for international progress is often lost.
I will be brief because I know there are some time constraints, but one could, of course, speak at length about security and defence cooperation as an important element of our partnership. The time has come for Europe to shoulder its fair share of the security burden. That is all we are seeking to do, to respond to American concerns that we have not been pulling our weight. As the Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Robertson, put it very succinctly last year, this is not about Europe going it alone, but about Europe doing more. A properly resourced and effective ESDP will allow the European Union to make a much larger contribution to transatlantic security. My main concern in this area is that we might fail to deliver, not that European success in delivering would antagonise the United States.
Let me go back for a moment to the communication on reinforcing the transatlantic relationship, which we tabled before Easter. In many ways the method of working together which we devised in 1995 was ahead of its time, but we are not resting on our laurels and would certainly be discouraged from doing so by those who have added such an important parliamentary dimension to our relationship.
It would be fair to say that over the years the machinery of cooperation has grown rather more complex than we intended. So we need to look over the structures and processes of cooperation, the architecture if you like, and the plumbing of our relations, in order to ensure that the whole machinery is geared as much as possible to action and the delivery of results."@en1
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