EU reaches for global role? (feature)
01 January 1996
A series of "Summits" and meetings at the end of 1995 showed the EU has started to bid for a global role. Two "Summits", partly based on economic agreements, EURO-MED and EU-US, contained important implications for "third pillar" issues and accountability within the EU. These were followed by a, largely unreported, meeting in Ottawa, Canada, initiating a globe-trotting counter-terrorist initiative.
The ideology running through these meetings is a familiar one - the linking of terrorism, the threats of immigration and drug trafficking, and consequent organised crime and money-laundering - except this time the focus is global as well as European. Nor do the issues raised contain any surprises. They are the "threats" to European and global "security" that have "emerged" in the post-Cold War era. The "threats" which internal security agencies - who previously countered the threats of espionage and subversion - have used to increasingly take on policing roles in Europe.
Madrid European Council, 15-16 December 1995
The Conclusions of the Madrid Summit in December, which marked the end of the Spanish Presidency of the European Union, noted "with some satisfaction some significant achievements... in which the European Union has played a decisive role". The Summit Conclusions go on to list: 1) the "new Transatlantic Agenda and the Joint EU-US Action Plan" which would "revitalise and strengthen our association.. moving on from a stage of consultations towards a new stage of concerted and joint action.. It hopes that other Atlantic democracies will share the goals of the New Transatlantic Agenda." 2) the "Barcelona Declaration", which came out of the Euro-Med Conference, "a new, comprehensive Euro-Mediterranean association which will promote peace, stability and prosperity throughout the Mediterranean through a permanent process of dialogue and cooperation". 3) the
"Inter-Regional Framework Agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, the first agreement of this type... the final objective of which is to achieve political and economic association." ("Mercosur", is the new acronym for Latin America). 4) the signing of an Agreement on "precursors" signed on 18 December between the EU and the five countries of the Andean Pact to combat drugs. No more information is given in the Conclusions of the Summit except on drugs (see below).
For more detail of these "significant achievements" the reports on other meetings have to be examined.
EURO-MED Summit, Barcelona, 27-28 November 1995
"the Barcelona Declaration: a new, Euro-Mediterranean association"
The Euro-Mediterranean Conference resulted in the "Barcelona Declaration which, while offering economic aid and a "free trade area", is not a precursor to membership of the EU - unlike the Association Agreements with the countries of central and eastern Europe (CCEE) (see Statewatch, vol 5 no 4). The Conference was attended by the Maghreb countries of north Africa, Cyprus and Malta, and Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. US officials were deliberately excluded, even as observers, for this was to be one initiative run by the EU. The European newspaper summed up the purpose of the Conference:
"Above all, the aim of the rich EU is to hold back the millions in north Africa, a tide of illegal migrants waiting to percolate through the thousands of kilometres of the frontier of the Mediterranean coast" (30.11.95)
Another commentator, Sajid Rizvi, of the UPI press agency, said: "For Europe, the whole thing is about buying security. Even immigration is not a political issue; it is a security issue."
The Declaration is, of course, nowhere near as explicit, speaking of:
"the will to give their future relations a new dimension, based on comprehensive cooperation and solidarity, in keeping with the privileged nature of the links forged by neighbourhood and history."
The clauses on immigration were amended at the insist