Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, had called Thursday’s meeting of the European Council to set priorities in its relations with China, India and other important countries. But the EU’s approach to these “strategic partners” remains as opaque as it was before the summit. Perhaps this was no great surprise: the EU’s foreign policy bodies had not prepared any issue papers to guide the discussions, which turned into a largely unstructured brainstorming. 

The final statement was accordingly thin on substance. The national leaders vowed to “act more strategically so as to bring Europe’s true weight to bear internationally”. This required, they said, “a clear identification of its strategic interests and objectives at a given moment and a focused reflection on the means to pursue them more assertively”.

‘Sidelined’ EU

Van Rompuy called the summit in part because of what he described as a “perception” that the EU had been “sidelined” at the failed global climate talks in Copenhagen in December. He pointed to the growing importance of the G20 group of leading and emerging economies as a “sign of changing power relationships” with “new players” that “don’t always share our interests and world-views”.

It was left to national leaders to flesh out some of the details of the EU’s new foreign-policy approach. “We want more balanced economic relations” with China, Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, said. “Europeans expect from China concrete gestures such as the reinforcement of intellectual property rights and the opening of public procurement.”

More ownership

In general, according to Van Rompuy, the leaders “want more ownership by the European Council in [EU] foreign affairs”. “The key messages should be managed by the European Council,” he said. “They should be prepared and implemented by the Foreign Affairs Council, the [European] Commission and the high representative [for foreign policy].”

Sarkozy said that the leaders had agreed that each meeting with a foreign government should have a “road-map”. “The European Council will fix three or four priorities for each bilateral summit, the Council will define precise objectives,” he said.

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