President Obama can’t seem to get his fill of summits. Monday he hosts yet another one, capping a month in which he has attended seven summits on four continents. This time, he gets to stay in the White House and the leaders he will meet aren’t exactly household names. But the topics – the European debt crisis, China, Syria, and Egypt – are the same that headlined the earlier summits.
The occasion is the annual U.S.-EU summit and representing the European Union’s 27 countries are European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU High Representative Catherine Ashton. The leaders will meet for about two hours in the Roosevelt Room before continuing talks over lunch in the Cabinet Room and a concluding press conference. The meeting also comes at an unfortunate time for Obama who at the G-20 summit in Cannes pressed the Europeans to take bolder steps to deal with their debt crisis. But with last week’s very-public collapse of the super committee’s work here, Obama is certain to face questions from the Europeans about whether Washington is capable of similarly bold action to confront American debt.
The central message they will take to the Oval Office, said the ambassador, is “Europe is doing its homework. Individual countries are doing their homework. They are painfully implementing measures that are not politically easy.”
In return, of course, the president can expect the visiting leaders to ask him what he is doing on this side of the Atlantic to match the European actions. Many of them were dismayed at the debt ceiling debacle. And nothing that occurred with the supercommittee did anything to allay their concerns.
For more: EU Leaders to Argue Europe Is Doing Its Part With Debt Crisis—Is U.S? - George E. Condon Jr. - NationalJournal.com
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