COMMON EUROPEAN FOREIGN POLICY? THE WORK IS IN PROGRESS

by Richard N. Gardner

The Herald Tribune, Tuesday, January 30, 1996

MADRID - Back in the 1970s, Henry Kissinger used to explode in frustration: "If Europe has a foreign policy, I wish someone would tell me its phone number!" Like most Americans concerned with international affairs, I used to share Mr. Kissinger's scepticism about Europe's ability to get its foreign policy act together. But recent experience during Spain's exceptionally productive turn as president of the European Union suggests that outsiders should reconsider their doubts. To be sure, the European Union continues to have a complex and diffuse foreign policy machinery that often seems at odds with the achievement of the "common foreign and security policy" that is the objective of the Maastricht treaty. For example, every six months a different member state assumes the EU presidency and takes its turn at the helm of the European Council, the supreme decisionmaking body, composed of heads of state or government. The presidency country, which represents the Union in foreign and security policy matters, also ch

airs monthly meetings of the General Affairs Council composed of foreign ministers; other council meetings involving other cabinet ministers; more frequent meetings of the Political Committee made up of midlevel national political directors; and Coreper, the body of ambassadors to the Union resident in Brussels. The Coreper shares with the Political Committee the main responsibility for presenting foreign policy proposals to the General Affairs Council and for implementing its decisions. The European Parliament influences foreign policy through its debates, hearings and recommendations and, most decisively, by its control of the Union's budget and by its power to approve treaties. The Spanish government led by Felipe González, despite domestic scandals and the threat of early elections, demonstrated in the latter half of 1995 how the EU presidency country could employ this complex machinery to forge a consensus among EU members for action on an important range of foreign policy issues. Consider the following

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U.S.-EU relations. Responding to an initiative of Secretary of State Warren Christopher and to similar ideas percolating inside its own Foreign Ministry, Spain secured approval from its fellow EU members of a comprehensive "New Trans-Atlantic Agenda" and "U.S.-EU Action Plan" negotiated in record time between a group of senior negotiators from Spain, the United States and the Commission. The agreements commit the United States and the Union to more that 100 specific actions, from joint efforts in Bosnian reconstruction and the coordination of global aid programs to measures to liberalize trade and investment, combat international crime and narcotics trafficking and strengthen trans-Atlantic educational an cultural exchange. The Euromed initiative. Spain hosted in Barcelona November the 15 EU member and 12 countries of the Mediterranean region - including Syria and Israel - to approve an unprecedented program for political, economic and culture cooperation. Follow-up meetings in 1996 and future yearswill fles

h out the programs launched in Barcelona for greater EU development aid, liberalized regional trade, domestic economic reforms, democracybuilding, and inter-religious dialogue. This is an ambitious and forward-looking strategy to bring together Europe and its Islamic neighbors to counter the forces of divergence. Latin America. The Union has taken steps to expand its relations with Latin America, most recently by signing in December a "Framework Cooperation Agreement" with the countries of Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay). Turkey. Leadership from Spain helped ensure a positive vote in the European Parliament for the EU-Turkish customs union, giving important recognition and encouragement to the Turkish government's efforts to improve human rights and sustain its proWestern orientation. In the post-Cold War world, trade and aid as well as cultural cooperation are assuming growing importance as instruments of foreign policy. Between now and 1999, the Union will be providing $6.5 billion in ai

d to the Mediterranean countries, $ 1 0 billion to Central and Eastern Europe (including Russia and Ukraine), and $16 billion to former dependencies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. It will be making large sums available to the Palestinian authority and to the wardevastated areas of the former Yugoslavia to support peace in those troubled regions. To be sure, European foreign policy is a work in progress, and one can still find areas, such as Cuba and Iran, where EU members disagree among themselves as well as with the United States. The same can be said for an EU security policy. Nevertheless, undeniable progress was made in 1995, and the commitments to take common action with America on so many specific projects will have the important effect of stimulating common action on these same subjects between the EU countries themselves. In their Intergovernmental Conference opening in Turin at the end of March, the EU members will have an opportunity to revise EU institutions and procedures to make sure

that a common foreign and security policy can be made to work in a Union of expanded membership in the coming years. Italy has now taken over from Spain as EU president. It has a hard act to follow. But the last six months have shown that great strides have been made toward developing the "telephone number" that Henry Kissinger was looking for.

The writer, formerly professor of international law at Columbia University, is U.S. ambassador to Spain. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.