Aiming for coherence
Published: 01 October, 2009
All eyes are on Ireland as the country prepares for a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which could dramatically alter the EU’s structure
The Swedish presidency of the EU allows Stockholm to air some of its thinking on the rationalisation of European development and foreign policy. However, the Lisbon Treaty, which proposes major changes to the union’s leadership structure, looms large over any discussion of reform.
Gunilla Carlsson, Sweden’s minister for international development cooperation, has recently returned from two days in Harare, alongside her EU counterpart Karel de Gught. The visit was the first of its kind since 2002, when Brussels imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, and although it was led by two representatives of Europe’s development community, the tone was inescapably political.
Alongside a strong focus on climate change, aligning the development and political interests of the European Union under the umbrella concept of “the EU as a global actor” is one of the Swedish government’s stated priorities, according to Peter Sörbom, EU policy officer of Concord Sweden, the local association of the European confederation of relief and development NGOs.
Stockholm will also look to push forward some of its ideas on aid effectiveness and strengthen the interrelation between EU policy and development priorities, Mr Sörbom says. Research on the overlap between areas of interest such as trade, migration and climate, and how existing European programmes support the development agenda will be published by the European Commission later in the year, although Mr Sörbom is critical of the lack of focus on the negative side of interrelation. “In a way it’s quite limited an instrument in the sense that they are looking at the synergy effects [of the various interests], they are not looking at the incoherence that much,” he says.
Mr Sörbom believes that the Swedish focus on this area is serendipitous, but not necessarily deliberate, at a time when the Lisbon Treaty vote has put the notion of rationalising the EU’s foreign policy interests into sharp focus.
“It is quite timely. [These areas] would be priorities anyway, they are two areas where Sweden sees itself in the driving seat, as one of the more progressive countries in looking at aid quality… When we talked about these issues a couple of years ago, but we did not see it in terms of this distant treaty and the reforms that could come out of it,” says Mr Sörbom.
The Irish public votes on whether to ratify the Lisbon Treaty on 2 October for the second time. In June last year, the country voted against adoption of the treaty, putting the brakes on the reform agenda for the EU.
“The Lisbon treaty provides a new institutional framework for really consolidating and enhancing what the EU can do on the world stage,” says Peadar ó Broin, a senior researcher at the Institute for International and European Affairs in Dublin.
The most obvious changes will be in the leadership structure, where the treaty proposes the creation of a president of the European Council, a figure who will coordinate the internal relations of member states to come to consensus positions on the EU’s global role. A second post of high representative for foreign affairs will then be created to act as a foreign minister for the council and promote those positions in global forums.
“Simplifying the European Union’s foreign policy framework means that you no longer have turf wars to the same degree between the Council of Ministers and the European Commission,” Mr ó Broin says. The Council of Ministers holds decision making authority, and the various national foreign policy and development interests come out strongly.
The Commission, however, has the budget. “The turf wars between the two really haven’t resulted in a very coherent policy in the EU states for a long time, and really what the big achievement of the Lisbon treaty is that it tries to reconcile the political power with the monetary power over the budget,” he explains.
The treaty will also combine to some extent external relations, excepting security and defence, as a single set of interests, and set down a number of common goals and policies. These include sustainable development and climate change, economic integration and, for the first time, the eradication of poverty.
“These are horizontal clauses – they’re cross cutting provisions which will apply no matter what the European Union is doing, whether it’s looking at trade policy or it’s looking at development goals. All the European Union’s actions will be coherent and consistent with these provisions,” Mr ó Broin says.
“This is only a treaty, and a lot of this will depend on the political actors and the political willpower that is invested in implementing these rules, but it does provide coherence between the EU’s policies in that regard, and you can no longer say, if the Lisbon Treaty comes into force, that there is a special prominence given to trade in that hierarchy… I think that’s a major achievement.”
