In Washington they're not sure who's in charge. In Brussels they're squabbling. Ian Traynor reports on the EU's crisis of confidence
Sitting in parkland in the shadow of the European parliament, the Bibliothèque Solvay is that rare thing in Brussels's dismal European quarter ? a pretty building.
But when heads of government or state from 27 countries meet here on Thursday under their new president, Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium, they will have little time for the art nouveau fittings or for the old books lining the wood-panelled walls of the 1902 library.
The first EU summit under Van Rompuy's stewardship sees Europe slumped in a mood of unusually persistent gloom. Van Rompuy, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and the rest are in charge of a Europe engulfed by a sense of defeatism and decline and exhausted by nine long years of trying to construct a new European regime. The reasons for the ennui are clear. According to senior officials, analysts, and diplomats in Brussels, Paris, London and Berlin, Europe suddenly seems to matter a lot less in the world. Additionally, its leaders appear unsure of how to tackle their single currency's biggest ever crisis, and are engaged in petty power struggles and point-scoring over how to use the EU's new rulebook ? the Lisbon treaty.
"There are a lot of blame games," said a senior European diplomat. "A lot of handwringing and bitching. No one is coming through to lead. It's not a pretty picture at all and it looks pathetic to the rest of the world."
Since EU leaders last met in Brussels before Christmas, the mood has soured. For the Europeans who claimed for two years to be leading the world on climate change, the global warming summit in Copenhagen was the gamechanger, a moment when the global balance of power tilted and relegated the EU to the second division.
"What we saw in Copenhagen is that Europe does not count," Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, told a conference of Brussels thinktanks.
"For good or for ill," a senior European official told the Guardian, "the message that Copenhagen sent is that Europe is not at the table. The fact of the matter is that Europe's leaders were taking a coffee and [Barack] Obama visited them at the coffee break. But he negotiated with others."
The Europeans are struggling to recover from that blow.
For the past 18 months, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, has been warning that Europe faces being sidelined in a "G2" world run by the US and China unless the EU steps up.
Miliband's worst fears materialised when Obama held his press conference at the end of Copenhagen and deleted Europe from the script.
"If the G2 world was approaching, suddenly there it was," said the diplomat. "A seminal and symbolic moment."
In the library on Thursday, Van Rompuy is to hold a postmortem. What went wrong and what are we going to do about it, he will ask his fellow national and EU leaders. The way they have written the script, Van Rompuy himself, as the first permanent president of the European council, is part of the solution. Most others are not so sure.
The former Belgian prime minister's rise is the product of the Lisbon treaty, which in turn is a wordier and more complex version of the ill-fated European constitution which had to be binned because of voter rejection in France and the Netherlands.
The treaty came into force in December and is supposed to cure Europe's malaise by streamlining decision-taking, simplifying procedures, boosting common foreign policy, and supplying strong and coherent leadership.
It is early days, but the new regime has started not with a bang but with a whimper. Where there was to be coherence, there is confusion. Where there was to be clear leadership, there are turf wars and rival presidents.
Obama announced last week he was too busy for a slated summit with the Europeans in Madrid in May. When Mongolia's leader, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, visited Brussels last week he was nonplussed by the plethora of "European presidents" whom protocol prescribed he must meet (there are currently four).
The US state department made plain that one reason for Obama's absence is that, under Lisbon, it was not clear with whom the Americans should be dealing.
Matthias Matthijs, a Washington-based academic who is visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bologna Centre, said the post-Lisbon fiasco over who is in charge may take a year to sort out. "There is a sense in Washington that Europe needs to get its act together," he said. "It's another missed opportunity for Europe. They do not have anyone to put on the world stage."
That person is supposed to be Van Rompuy or Catherine Ashton, the new EU foreign policy chief also created by the Lisbon treaty.
But no one appears to have told the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who took on the rotating six-month presidency of the EU last month determined not to forfeit any of its perks and privileges to Van Rompuy who, under the Lisbon terms, chairs all summits of EU leaders.
The Spanish government website bragged that the Obama summit in Madrid in May would be a highlight of its presidency, though it forgot to consult the Americans. In addition, in the next four months alone, the Spanish have scheduled themselves to host as many as 10 EU summits with other parts of the world.
This appetite for summitry sits oddly with perceptions of European weakness. But it is of a piece with the European insistence on disproportionate attendance at the big global pow-wows.
In the three G20 summits of the past 18 months called to tackle the financial crisis, Europeans have taken up eight of the 20 places, seeming to confuse status and numbers with power. There is one place each for the Americans and Chinese, while the Europeans were represented by the Germans, British, French and Italians, plus José Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, plus whoever had the rotating EU presidency (the Swedes or the Czechs). Then the Spanish and the Dutch, neither formal members of the G20, clamoured for invitations and were given seats.
"It's ridiculous," said Antonio Missiroli of the European Policy Centre in Brussels. "One third of the G20, a half of the G8, almost one half of the UN security council. There are too many Europeans."
Amid this crowded field of leaders, leadership itself is at a premium. Increasingly in Europe, particularly as a result of the Lisbon treaty and the uninspiring choice of Van Rompuy and Ashton as the EU's summit and foreign policy chiefs, power lies in national capitals.
Diplomats and analysts complain that those national leaders are not up to the task of pooling authority and projecting power effectively on the world stage ? another purported aim of the Lisbon regime.
Of the figures who matter most, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has been invisible since winning a second term last autumn. Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi raises only smirks. Gordon Brown is credited with trying hard on the world financial crisis but is seen as a lame duck, while it is feared across the EU that David Cameron and William Hague, by contrast, will conspire to subvert rather than project European leadership. The sole figure to command respect for his political will and energy is Nicolas Sarkozy of France. But he is also viewed warily as too mercurial.
Cameron shock
EU diplomats expect a prime minister Cameron to try to boost the "special relationship" with the White House at the expense of European power. They add he could be in for a shock since the Obama administration could tell Cameron that the best thing he could do to support America is to get more engaged in strengthening the EU.
Günter Verheugen, Germany's outgoing European commissioner, painted a picture this week of tired strategic division, confusion, and hesitancy at the heart of Europe.
"Within the EU there is no idea of where they're going. There's no agreement on what the borders of the EU should look like one day and no agreement on how to define our role in the world," he told Der Spiegel news magazine. "We want the Americans to take us seriously as partners. But first we need to work on our capacity for partnership ? The Americans expect more global engagement from us, but we're not ready for that."
On Afghanistan or Iran, say senior diplomats, the Europeans are at odds and almost certain to frustrate any hopes in Washington of common, tough, and risky policies.
The backdrop to the black mood in Brussels is economic. The fallout from the banking collapse in the form of colossal public debt levels and budget deficits is tying the hands of governments. The short-term troubles are coupled with the longer-term scenario of shrinking and ageing populations, a Europe condemned to genteel and geriatric decline while the emerging economies boom.
Hopeful noises
"We face fiscal challenges never seen before, of an unprecedented magnitude," said Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of the Bruegel economics thinktank.
Optimism is rare. It exists, but tends to be the preserve of outsiders watching the EU. To discern more hopeful noises, you have to cross the Atlantic.
US economists and Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz appear sanguine about Europe, with Krugman arguing recently in the New York Times that the European welfare state and social market economy have survived the financial crisis well and represent a more successful and enviable model than America's.
Steven Hill, a director at the Washington-based New America Foundation, has just published a book, Europe's Promise, which argues that "the European way is the best hope in an insecure age".
He dismissed talk of the EU being "marginalised" in a G2 world. On the contrary, he emphasised that the Obama White House was under pressure from the EU on climate change and financial regulation. "This, of course, is the exact opposite of the view that 'Europe is irrelevant'. Europe is actually hyper-relevant," he said. "Obama knows that Europe is leading in these ways, and he would like to follow to some extent, but he is having a hard time delivering."
Such views appear Panglossian to the gloom-mongers of the continent. According to French political philosopher Pierre Manent, Europe is a fair-weather union which "vanishes into the horizon" in a crisis. "We only look to Europe when everything is going well," while the "outside world views the EU as a union of decadent imperialists who make a virtue of their powerlessness," he said in a recent lecture.
On Thursday, Van Rompuy hopes to reverse this drift towards perceived impotence by locking the leaders in the library and knocking heads together.
He hopes that the humiliation at Copenhagen and other setbacks can serve as a wake-up call.
Additional reporting by Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Lizzy Davies in Paris
The battling bosses
Laying claim to the championship title of European president is a bit like sorting out who rules as world heavyweight boxer, quips a senior European diplomat.
In the ring, there's the WBA and the WBC, the IBA or the WBO, all laying claim to be honouring the true heavyweight champion of the world and usually begging to differ.
In the EU, thanks to the Lisbon Treaty, we now have the European council president, Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium, as well as the European commission president, José Manuel Barroso of Portugal, starting a second five-year term. Then there is the residual rotating six-month EU presidency, held since last month by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, prime minister of Spain. And finally, there is Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister who is president or speaker of the European parliament.
The early impact of the Lisbon regime has been embarrassing, generating lots of heat and little light. Rather than a seamless transition to a new and simple regime of identifiable power vested in one person, there is bickering, brinkmanship and unclear lines of authority.
Famously, if apocryphally, Henry Kissinger said he did not know who to call if calling "Europe". The Lisbon Treaty was supposed to settle that. Instead, the answer remains as clear as mud.
Van Rompuy answers to EU heads of government and organises and chairs all their summits. His first, especially convened by him, is in Brussels on Thursday. But he is being undermined by Zapatero, who wants to make the most of his six months as EU president. He has called 10 bilateral EU summits with other parts of the world, to be held in Spain, although they are now all supposed to be under Van Rompuy.
Barroso, head of the commission, or EU executive, and the Belgian are also said to be squabbling over powers, budgets, and assets.
The optimists say the new regime will take a while to bed down, but will then function smoothly and more effectively. The pessimists say the new regime took so long to agree ? almost nine ill-starred years ? that it is already past its sell-by date, but that no one has the stomach to suggest anything better.
The outcome is there is no heavyweight champion at all. Europe is punching well below its weight.
Ian Traynor Brussels
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