EU summit fails to excite Obama
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Shortly after his meeting with EU leaders, U.S. President Barack Obama summed it up by saying "This summit was not as exciting as other summits."
Relations between the United States and the EU, the two economic giants with a combined population of 800 million, about half of the world's economic output and a third of world trade, are extremely important, but meetings between their leaders are not noted for generating much excitement.
Obama graciously attributed the lack of fireworks to the fact that both sides agree on most issues in their talk characterized by shared values and a willingness to work together to boost growth, create jobs and protect the environment.
The reality, however, is that the United States has trouble getting to grips with the EU's complex overlapping structures and often prefers to deal directly with Britain, France, Germany or other nations that make up the 27-nation bloc.
Obama canceled plans for a summit earlier this year in Madrid and only agreed to meet his EU partners this semester when the proposed summit in EU headquarters in Brussels was tacked on the end of a NATO summit he was due to attend in Lisbon.
The EU-U.S. summit lasted two hours after the two-day NATO talks. In a brief statement after the meeting, Obama, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy all stressed the importance of the transatlantic link and the common values shared by both sides.
Ambassadors from both sides then listed some practical results of the meeting: economic experts would work to reduce non-tariff trade barriers to further liberalize exchanges; a working group would be established to exchange ideas on fighting cyber-crime; and they agreed to better coordinate economic aid to developing nations - together they hand out 80 percent of all official development aid.
The leaders also agreed to back each other in dealing with a number of sensitive international issues such as the Middle East peace process, upcoming referendum in Sudan and instability in Yemen.
The summit was the first since the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which revises the way the Union does business. One of the major objectives of the Treaty was to strengthen EU's foreign policy, but the creation of the post currently held by Van Rompuy, who is supposed to speak on behalf of all 27 member nations has yet to convince Washington that the quiet-spoken former Belgian prime minister can really speak for Europe.
The doubts are enhanced by the fact that Van Rompuy is always joined by Barroso, a former Portuguese prime minister, who heads the EU's executive body.
Meanwhile, U.S. diplomats had hoped the entry into force of the Treaty -- after a decade of negotiations among the EU nations -- would have brought more cohesion and clarity to EU policy.
But to their regret, a year after the adoption of the treaty, Catherine Ashton, EU's foreign policy chief, is still struggling to put together its diplomatic service.
