Strains are showing in the EU’s new foreign policy structures - by Tony Barber

Are they just teething problems? Or is something more serious at stake? One way or another, the first signs are emerging that the European Union’s new foreign policy structures, established under the Lisbon treaty that came into force last month, are capable of producing just as much discord and disharmony as the old arrangements.

Let’s take the EU’s response to the Haiti earthquake. Baroness Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign affairs supremo, convened an emergency meeting on January 18 at which the 27-nation bloc quickly and efficiently agreed a generous aid package for Haiti worth over 400 million euros. At a news conference after the meeting, she was asked if she would be visiting Haiti and, if not, why not. She replied that she wouldn’t be going, because the United Nations had requested her and other foreign dignitaries to stay away in order not to disrupt the emergency aid effort. However, Karel De Gucht, the EU’s outgoing humanitarian aid commissioner, would travel to Haiti. A perfectly sensible response.

A few days later, the sleuth-like French blogger Jean Quatremer reported that Michel Barnier, France’s nominee for the next European Commission, had criticised Ashton in a briefing for French reporters for not visiting Haiti. When he was France’s foreign minister and the Asian tsunami had struck in 2004, he had gone straight to the devastated region, Barnier recalled.

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