EU Presidency wants ‘more active’ EU role in Transforming Atlantic Alliance

The Portugal News, 1 September 2007

The Portuguese EU Presidency has called for a “renovation” of the transatlantic alliance with the United States through a process that would bolster the role of the 27 – nation European bloc. Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado, in comments to LUSA (the Portuguese Government news agency) by telephone from Paris, said he had defended such an initiative at annual gathering of French diplomats on Tuesday.

The renewal of the trans-Atlantic relationship and a more active role for the European Union in process of transforming the Atlantic alliance is essential from our point of view, Minister Amado said.

The proposal renewal, he added, should “not be led only by the United states”.
Minister Amado defended that alliance’s transformation should be based on an “adequate reflection” over the “system of Values” that serves as its foundation“, the need to reinforce the system of defense and security”, the strengthening of economic and social dimension” and “stronger cooperation on the international scene” between Europe, the United States and Canada.

“These are essential elements for the action of transforming the Atlantic alliance toward the strategic objective of the 21st century and for the accompaniment by the European Union of this transformation process that should not be only led by the United States”, he said ha had told the French diplomatic corps.

To this point, my comment is simple and clear. EU clearly has an unresolved issue on its relationship with United States of America. In reference to my previous article regarding the Transatlantic relations, I made an argument to that issue that there was a clear imbalance relationship between the two entities, particularly the way of tackling defense and security matters.

The US has been showing its leadership by acting unilateralism on the other hand the EU remains having problem to accumulate a united decision among them. This situation has been largely owing to the EU internal political problem that in many times hard to be united when confronting with US Global role and interests. The above brief news extracted form Portugal news, support the above mentioned assumption.