Low-profile EU leaders mirror feeble global role

• With selection of van Rompuy and Lady Ashton, we are in danger of making Europe politically irrelevant

True, we tend to align ourselves these days more with Venus than Mars, something for which the rest of the world should be deeply grateful. But we take this a little too far.

It is not just that Europe does not spend enough on hard power, but that what it does spend – about €200 billion – is spent badly.

For reasons of history, morality, and security, Africa should be regarded as a particular European responsibility.

We should deploy our aid, diplomacy, and peace-keeping capacity to support sustainable development, good governance, and regional collaboration on the continent.

Third, where Europe has a serious internal policy, it is easier to establish a more serious external policy.

The best example of this is energy policy and Russia, which wants a sphere of influence around its borders.

Dealing with Russia has probably been the biggest failure in the attempt to make European foreign policy.

To formulate such a policy requires us to frame a single energy policy.

Lady Ashton will need to be firm in dealing with Russia and with member states who subordinate Europe to the commercial interests of their national energy companies.

Fourth, European external policy is most effective the nearer it is to home.

We are at our best in our own neighbourhood — and at our worst, too.

The greatest success of Europe’s external policy has been EU enlargement.

This promoted and consolidated regime change without the use of weapons, thereby stabilizing the European continent.

The job is not complete. The prospect of EU membership is at the heart of EU policy in the western Balkans, where we are starting to show (for example in Bosnia-Herzegovina) a dangerous disinclination to apply tough conditionality.

We are committed to Ukraine’s “European vocation,” but not to its EU membership. Spot the difference!