Toespraak eurocommissaris Rehn over de rol van Europa in de wereld (en)

SPEECH/08/115

Olli Rehn

EU Commissioner for Enlargement

Europe's Role in the World - the next 25 years

CEPS annual conference "Europe's role in the world - the next 25 years"

Brussels, 28 February 2008

Our topic today is as broad as it is long - what kind of Europe in what kind of world? The question facing the European Union 25 years ago was whether the EU should become a global actor. Now it is how the EU acts globally - and how to improve our instruments. That's progress!

Let me make three sketchy points on this in my brief introduction.

First of all, the EU's role in the world today - and I trust also tomorrow - rests essentially on our internal strength, i.e. on our internal policies. The single market, the euro and our progressive environmental policies testify to the fact that the EU is a regulatory superpower, which gives us policy lead in many areas. To name the most recent examples, the chemicals legislation and the climate and energy package are paving the way towards successful global governance on these critical challenges.

I'm sure that our external impact will, also in the future, essentially be based on our internal strength. But we are not using our internal competences with the maximum impact today. We should reinforce our capacity to act together in external economic policy. I am thinking, for instance, the external dimension of energy policy. This should be a priority of any future European security strategy.

In fact, energy could be as important as the Single Market project in the future European integration, but only if we manage to get a collective will for a common policy. The EU Member States are not far apart on the goals - on securing supply, reducing carbon emissions and ensuring sustainable energy policies - but still too distant on means.

In terms of regulatory power, size matters. That's why EU enlargement is one of the assets of the Union. The current Union of 500 million consumers has much more weight in the global economy than the cosy Common Market did. Both size and internal strength are essential for our policy lead in global economic and ecological governance.

Secondly, partly for that reason, as well as for European values and interests, the projection of the soft power - or transformative power - of the EU in our own neighbourhood should continue and be reinforced. This applies to both enlargement and neighbourhood policies.

The idea at the heart of the European project is a simple one: create institutions and rules within which countries can conduct their business more effectively than through bullying and war-mongering - and other countries will seek to do the same. The success of European integration has stimulated the creation of many other regional projects, such as ASEAN and Mercosur. In my view, the EU's creation of a rules-based framework that is respected worldwide makes Europe a global actor.

In the area under my responsibility, enlargement, the EU has successfully used its membership conditionality to export its economic and political models to post-communist Europe. History will show this to be the most successful example of long-lasting regime change ever. Today, this soft power of democratic and economic transformation is in action in most of Southeastern Europe, i.e. the Western Balkans and Turkey.

Thirdly and finally, in foreign and security policy, we need to develop "smart power" by better combining soft and hard power.

We Europeans work for a stable multilateral world. With the rise of China and India, we can have strong policy impact in the world only by pooling our resources through the EU. To do this, we must develop our capacity to make more coherent foreign policies and improve the Union's institutional architecture for external policy. Therefore, it is of paramount importance for European construction that the Lisbon Treaty be ratified, as it includes essential changes to our external policy-making.

In this respect, we cannot deny that our role in Kosovo is a severe test of the EU's capacity to deal with security challenges on our own continent - in fact, in our own front-yard and future home territory. We were bound to steer and take responsibility for this profoundly European issue.

To conclude: as we ponder the long run of 25 years, we must not overlook short-run challenges. John Maynard Keynes famously quipped, as to the economy, that "In the long run, we are all dead". For the external policy of the European Union, this equals to saying that "To have a chance in the long run, we have to get it right in the short run". - That's why Kosovo and the stability of the Western Balkans are a critical litmus test for the EU's foreign policy. We cannot - and shall not - fail.

Thank you for listening, and I look forward to hearing your views.