iCES Occasional Paper 06
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to be an absolute priority task for the EU. If they get this wrong, all they have achieved over the last 30 or 40 years risks going wrong. That is not in our interest nor in the USA’s interest, it seems to me, so that is a vital first task. The EU does have foreign policy influence, as I have mentioned over Iran. It has limited defence capability but it has an important economic aid programme: that last bit in particular is worth stressing. But the limited defence capacity, and the foreign policy influence, only really work because of the growing acceptance in the EU of 27 that some member states can go and do things on their own, and that the others will agree with it. That too was anathema some 10-15 years ago, but it is now pretty much accepted. I haven't read a huge amount of opposition to the UKFrench defence treaties announced the other day. I think that is an excellent thing that the UK and France should be doing that. Set against the dream of a federal union with its own monetary policy and defence capability, the EU today may seem rather a disappointment but, set against the chaos of the post-war era, it is a huge achievement. The EU over the next year or two will and must focus on its internal structure; it must focus in particular on economic and monetary union but it must not do so at the expense of its external policy. Iran is a very good example of its external influence but the Copenhagen summit was a nadir. Changes in global politics – the rise of China, China versus India, the rise of Brazil and so on – are inevitable. They mean that the EU will feature less in US thinking than has been the case in the past. I don't think that should be a great worry to us. It is great that the US is thinking about the problems it has elsewhere. Even as far the US is concerned, the EU can be a stable economic and monetary system with a developing foreign policy: it seems to me that is an extremely good balance of relationships. We shouldn’t be worrying all the time that the EU is what it is. Although it falls short of what some people thought it might have been, it is actually rather important and I think we should welcome that, and let the US get on with its issues in China and elsewhere. In other words, I think the Atlantic has always been pretty wide, at times it has been stormy, and at times a bit narrower. I think it is now calmer than it has been for quite a while: a bit foggy perhaps, but the storms are elsewhere. If the storms are elsewhere, and the US is dealing with those storms elsewhere, let us do what is right for us. We need to