Discussing Europe’s role in the world

TALLINN - Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and Foreign Minister Urmas Paet attended the extraordinary meeting of the European Council, held in Brussels on Sept. 16, and chaired by the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, where the main topics for discussion were the foreign policy of the European Union and relations with strategic partners, as well as how to boost the efficiency of international communication by making full use of the opportunities provided by the Lisbon Treaty. General agreement was reached on principles to improve the foreign policy of the European Union.

“Today’s discussions saw us take a step closer to the creation of a more harmonized foreign policy for the European Union,” said Prime Minister Ansip. “The Council agreed that Europe must be more demonstrative in defending its interests and values.”

Speaking ahead of the event, Van Rompuy said that “until now, we had strategic partners; now we also need a strategy! I see the September 16th meeting as the beginning of a process, with many actors involved. As the world changes rapidly, the European Council will continue to give guidance to make sure that the Union asserts its interests and values in the world. Foreign policy will be from now on the agenda of almost every European Council. Thursday’s Council will be the first in a long row.”

The government leaders and heads of state at the meeting expressed their view that the European Union must be a strong partner who is ready to take on its share of responsibility for global security. They also added that a strong economy and internal harmony would see the union’s influence on the world stage grow.
Analyzing ways in which to improve the foreign policy activities of the union, the Council called on its members to ensure that all European Union and national resources and policies were used fully and consistently in support of the union’s strategic interests.

Those attending the summit also stressed the major stabilizing role the European Union continues to play in neighboring regions.
“Prioritizing the neighborhood policy is very important to us,” said Ansip. “The European Union’s credibility in the world depends on its willingness and ability to ensure stability in neighboring countries.” Ansip added that Estonia supports the further expansion of the union, precisely because this will lead to a larger area of stability in Europe.

Agreement was also reached at the meeting on general guidelines for forthcoming international summits. October will see high-level meetings with China and South Korea, as well as the Asia-Europe meeting. Leaders from the European Union have promised to pay particular attention at these meetings to the promotion of bilateral trade, market access and investment conditions, intellectual property rights, migration and standards of workmanship.
The European Council was also given an overview of the activities to date of the economic governance taskforce. According to council president Van Rompuy, the working group has made significant progress, particularly in developing a new framework for macroeconomic supervision.

According to Van Rompuy more work is needed to decide sanctions for European Union (EU) member states which frequently violate budget rules of the bloc. “More work is needed despite important progress made by the task force mandated to sort out ways to strengthen economic governance of the 27-nation bloc,” he said.
“We continue to work on financial and non-financial sanctions, taking into account some legal and constitutional elements,” said Van Rompuy, who led the task force set up according to a decision made by EU leaders at a summit in March.
The president said that the sanctions will probably focus in the first phase on the euro area and then on the whole EU. “We will finish our work by the end of October,” he said.

The EU leaders meanwhile underlined in a statement the need to maintain momentum on the reform of European economic governance, saying they look forward to receiving at its October 2010 meeting the final report of the task force. Tackling flaws in the EU’s economic governance, exposed by the Greek debt crisis, the task force, composed of EU finance ministers, identified four priorities at its first meeting in May, namely tougher budgetary discipline, narrowing divergences in competitiveness among member states, more coordination of economic policies and a permanent crisis resolution mechanism.

It has since met four times and is expected to present a final report to EU leaders on necessary reforms next month.
“Energy security, climate change and non-discrimination trade were among the top issues to be taken into account by the European Union in shaping its foreign policy and relation with partner countries,” said President of the Republic of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite.

The prime minister of Latvia, Valdis Dombrovskis, called for respect of the balance between political, economic and security dimensions in developing the relationships with the strategic partners, and stressed the substantial role of the EU’s neighborhood policy, particularly the Eastern Partnership, for the EU’s external relations.
Within the framework of the discussion Dombrovskis stressed that it is possible to use the European Union’s budget within the framework of the sanctions’ mechanism only if all kinds of budget expenditures are included in it. The prime minister called for development of clear and understandable principles and criteria for applying the sanctions’ mechanism.