Europe's smart power in its region and the world - Europa

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Chancellor, Warden, Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow Antonians, It’s great to be back at St Antony's. I joined this College in September 1990 to begin a thesis on international political economy. It was an exciting period in international relations and European politics. The Berlin Wall had been torn down. The Cold War was moving to the dustbin of history. The Soviet Union was heading towards termination. Freedom and democracy took great leaps forward both inside and outside Europe, although history did not quite end as some predicted. The dream of “Europe whole and free” suddenly seemed to be a realistic perspective. There was plenty of optimism in the air, overshadowed only by the threat of war as Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait and the international coalition was preparing to liberate that country. Perhaps it was a caprice of history that my research at Oxford ended up having direct relevance to my current job as the European Commissioner responsible for enlargement. I had decided to do my doctoral dissertation on the economic and political strategies of small European States. Its core argument stemmed from a rational intuition that some of the then EFTA countries might apply for EC membership in the near future. I wanted to understand the structural and historical premises of my rational intuition. Then Sweden announced its intention to apply for EC membership in October 1990, just weeks after I had started, which further strengthened the case for this line of research. I had planned to stay a couple of years in Oxford to complete my doctoral thesis. However, my research work was suddenly interrupted in March 1991 by the people of Helsinki, who voted me to the Finnish Parliament. To cure my professional guilt, I promised to submit my thesis prior to Finland becoming a Member of the European Union. Well, a year later Finland applied for EC membership, and together with Austria and Sweden, she became a member of the EU on 1 January 1995. I admit this happened faster than I had expected. And hence I could only fulfil my promise on the submission more than a year after the declared deadline. Shame on me – although I take comfort in the fact that this was still faster than most promises are fulfilled in politics. 2
Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m tempted to continue with memories and recollections from Oxford, but let me still focus on European affairs of the present and the future. My topic this evening is Europe's smart power in its region and in the world, with a particular focus on South Eastern Europe. This is closely related to another question – what kind of Europe do we want to develop in what kind of world? When I was a student here soon 20 years ago, the question then facing the EC was whether it should become a global actor. Today, the question is how the EU acts globally – and how to improve our institutions and policy instruments. I would call this progress. Let me explain what I mean by "smart power". Essentially, it is combining soft and hard power better in the EU's external relations by using the whole spectrum of our policy instruments and economic resources. This should be done in a forwardlooking, consistent and unified way. The EU was slow to develop the ambition to play a major global role. The EU founding fathers did not set out to build a superpower. Instead, their goal was to create an alternative form of international governance in Europe, to end the great power rivalries that had led to two world wars. But as the years went by, the EU became more engaged in global affairs, initially in economic areas such as aid and trade. In recent years, we have seen the Union engage in a wider range of activities outside of its borders – not only in development aid and institution building but also in diplomacy and security missions. Since the 1990s, largely as a lesson learned from the disastrous Balkan wars and following the realisation in France and Britain that they cannot deliver by going alone, the EU's common foreign and security policy has become worthy of its name. Thus, we are not starting from the scratch. But let us reflect, what are the best ways and means to further reinforce the EU's smart power in external relations in the future? To my mind, we get it right by working on the basis of the following two guiding principles. First of all, we must make the EU's external policies more coherent and effective. Our external impact is essentially based on our internal strength, so we must learn to use our formidable internal policies to a maximum external effect. For instance, the external dimension of energy policy should be a priority in any future European security strategy. I trust my colleague Javier Solana will take these points into account when revisiting the implementation of the European Security Strategy. The title of the 2003 strategy was called "A secure Europe in a better world". Perhaps the revised one due this year should be called "A better Europe in a secure world" – since we urgently need to work on improving the EU's capacities in external relations. We need both to upgrade our policy instruments and to make them work better together. It is equally vital to improve the institutional architecture of the Union by implementing the reforms to our external policy-making that are contained in the Lisbon Treaty. Of course that can only be done once the Treaty is ratified in all member states – and ratification is for each Member State to decide for itself. But it will come as no surprise to you that the Commission has endorsed the Lisbon Treaty, whose reforms to make the EU more effective and democratic are long overdue. 3
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