Last Update: July 26, 2007

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Balance Sheet of Germany’s EU Council Presidency 2007

Time to Move on - The European Union after the German Council Presidency

Council presidencies of the European Union always face a long list of expectations and topics competing for attention, but in the end it is often one single, defining issue which ultimately determines failure or success. When Germany last held the presidency in the first half of 1999, this defining element was the NATO confrontation and, eventually, war with Serbia over Kosovo. At that time, German diplomacy experienced one of its finest hours by, first, joining NATO's military intervention despite serious domestic opposition, but then also brokering a comprehensive political solution to the crisis. In the first half of 2007, the defining element for the German presidency clearly was the deadlock concerning the European Constitutional Treaty. Again, Germany's Council presidency has widely been hailed as a great success - not only by the Berlin government itself (which might be expected), but by much of national and international political opinion.

This praise seems to us quite justified. In fact, with regard to the constitutional issue Berlin has achieved more than it had originally envisaged and promised. At the end of 2006, the stated goals still seemed ambitious: to preserve the political substance (if not the form) of the Constitutional Treaty agreed and signed by the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) in 2004 but later rejected by public referenda in France and the Netherlands, and to this end draw a "road map" to provide orientation, process and a time frame for resolving the constitutional conundrum. In the end, Germany forged a compromise which retains most of the substantial reform proposals agreed in 2004, such as a President of the European Council to provide more continuity, extension of qualified majority voting, a legally binding Charter of fundamental Rights and a "High Representative for Foreign and Security Affairs" with more competences and resources than is currently the case. At Polish insistence, the "double majority" rule in Council voting procedures was postponed, but will eventually also be established as agreed in the Draft Treaty. The elements which had to be sacrificed were mostly ones of form and symbolism. Thus, the ambition to replace the current treaties of the European Communities and the European Union with a single text called "Constitution" was abandoned. So were other European "state symbols" such as the European flag or the anthem. Nor will the future foreign policy chief of the EU be allowed to call himself (or herself) "Foreign Minister".

None of this, frankly, matters greatly, as long as the Union now manages to overcome its internal crisis and regain its momentum. Support for the EU among its citizens will likely depend much more on its ability to act in the world than on symbols of a shared political identity. For that end, however, it will be pretty immaterial whether the EU's foreign policy chief will be called "Foreign Minister" or "High Representative", as long as he or she has the resources to do the job. This now seems assured, with the dual structure made up of the European Commission's External Relations services and the Council Secretariat to be bridged by the High Representative, who will be supported by a new European Foreign Service. Also, the postponement of the double majority vote will have much less practical relevance than is often assumed, because formal decision-making in the Council does not usually follow formal procedures. In the end, the dispute over double majority might well damage, rather than further, Poland's influence and standing in the Union.

Rather than providing a simple "road map" to a new text, the European Council of June 21/22 managed to agree on a detailed mandate for another IGC, to be held in the second half on this year under the Portuguese Council presidency. This 16-page mandate not only contains "orientation, process and a time frame", but also sets out detailed positions and even concrete wording. Thus, the mandate as such does not leave much more room for substantive renegotiations, and a positive outcome therefore seems all but assured.

Evidently, this is much more than the German presidency had originally aimed for. The breakthrough during the June European Council took hard bargaining and concessions from all governments, but the success had been carefully prepared by German diplomacy. Skillfully led by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Berlin systematically listened and talked to all partner countries, thus assessing opportunities for compromise early on. With this, Germany yet again displayed its (renewed) ability to forge winning coalitions which its government (and the chancellor herself) had demonstrated already during the EU summit in Brussels in December 2005, and again at the first summit during its presidency in March.

Despite all the praise, reforming the EU treaties is not the same as solving the European Union's real problems - it is only a precondition for doing so. While the Union has been preoccupied with itself over the past two years, a long list of European and international problems has accumulated, waiting for new impulses and solutions. From this perspective, the German presidency has been less successful. To be sure, Chancellor Merkel managed to get the support of all member countries for a set of new CO2 emission targets for 2020 proposed by the Commission, namely a 20 per cent reduction vis-ŕ-vis the base level of 1990 (to be increased to 30 per cent if other countries were to match the EU's pledge) at the March summit. Yet, it means nothing to formule ambitious goals and benchmarks to save the climate if these goals are not implemented. It is far from certain if EU countries will even meet their commitments under the current Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. And at the summit, Chancellor Merkel herself was reluctant to push for a unified European energy policy along the lines usefully proposed by the Commission in its energy strategy review. It is obvious that the EU will need a truly common energy policy if it is to meet the challenge of climate change.

Climate change is only one important reason why the EU needs a common energy policy. Another is the need to thoroughly overhaul and reshape the world's energy system which presently relies mostly on oil and natural gas, much of it imported from troubled regions; a third reason is the necessity to rebalance the unhinged relationship with Russia. The EU and Russia have so far been unable to conclude the much discussed new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. While the immediate reason is the Polish-Russian dispute over Polish meat exports, the true context is more complex and includes many disagreements (on energy policy, the Baltic States, missile defence, political developments in Russia and so on). In fact, the EU and its individual member states do not yet quite seem to know how to deal with Moscow. The many-voiced European reactions to the British-Russian dispute over the Litvinenko case is only the most recent example for this.

The list of urgent challenges facing the European Union does not end here. The future of EU enlargement and the Doha Round multilateral trade negotiations talks of the WTO remain unresolved and international conflicts in Kosovo, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sudan and Iran are waiting to be addressed urgently. In all of these trouble spots, the Europeans have taken themselves to the sidelines or even abandoned earlier leadership roles. In Kosovo, negotiations have been delegated first to a former Finnish president and then to the United Nations Security Council, with no visible input by the EU. In Afghanistan, the EU has left the field mostly to the United States and NATO, even though the recent installation of a common operation to train Afghan police officers (EUPOL Afghanistan) is a step in the right direction. In Iran, the conflict over the country's nuclear program simmers on and might one day turn into a violent crisis. While the EU troika of Great Britain, France, and Germany assumed the diplomatic lead in 2003 and 2004, negotiations now take place mostly among the great powers of the Security Council, without much progress. Of course, all of these conflicts are highly complex and difficult to resolve. Still, the EU will have to assume a higher profile than it did during the past two years if it wants those problems to be managed in a satisfactory way, and to be seen as an international actor to count with.

The German EU presidency was successful in helping to break the constitutional deadlock, which for better or worse had become its defining challenge. It thus has opened the way for the EU to leave behind its navel-gazing preoccupation with internal reforms, and deal with the long list of economic and political problems, within and beyond its own borders. This will ultimately be the true benchmark for Berlin's, and the EU's success - it is now time to move on.