Brussels-the global irrelevance
Perhaps it is a tribute to people's need to gather together in times of crisis. It is certainly difficult to think of any other explanation for the noticeably increased attendances at European commission briefings since 11th September-for the commission and indeed the EU have been almost totally irrelevant to the unfolding crisis. One commission spokesman says that after the attacks on New York and Washington "people kept ringing us up for our reaction. What could I say other than, 'we're shocked, we're appalled.' Because frankly we're about as relevant to all this as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds."
Eventually Brussels hacks in search of crisis-related copy inevitably make their way across town to Nato headquarters. Surely there would be a bit of action in its dingy offices? Not much to be honest. When Nato defence ministers held their first emergency meeting in Brussels after the attacks, Donald Rumsfeld didn't even bother to turn up. One can't help noticing also that the security at Nato still seems a little on the lax side. (I disclose this in the confident expectation that Osama bin Laden is not a Prospect subscriber.) One irritated Nato official, seeing your correspondent off the premises, remarked that it is the only military installation which is harder to get out of than into.
What the crisis has proved-to us frustrated Brusselians-is that when the chips are down, for all the talk of a common EU foreign and security policy the big decisions are still going to be made in the national capitals. The Germans and the French seemed a bit miffed that the Americans did not consult them more closely. The strength of the Anglo-American tie-up is meanwhile regarded with a degree of astonishment. The image of the prime minister receiving that standing ovation in Congress will have been stored in many a memory in Brussels. Of course Blair combined this with warmer talk about the euro-characteristically trying to have it both ways. So far things seem to be semi-working. But if the war goes on or widens, Blair's effort to have a foot planted on both sides of the Atlantic may end up with him doing the splits.
Common judicial space
Conspiracy theorists should have a look at the way agreement on a common EU arrest warrant was rushed through in the wake of 11th September. The people trying to create a common judicial space in Europe have long been pushing for the arrest warrant, as a means of getting around the lengthy extradition processes within Europe which have been so convenient for General Pinochet and other ne'er-do-wells. Under the warrant, one EU country will be able to get an arrest order automatically enforced in any other EU country. In the new climate, the commission whipped out this dog-eared document and presented it as a perfect antidote to terrorism. Commission spokesmen even stated publicly that the warrant would apply only to terrorist offences and cross-border organised crime. Bollocks. On closer inspection, it applies to any crime carrying a sentence of more than a year. This should make life fun for Judge Balthazar Garzon, the Spanish judge and pursuer of both Pinochet and Silvio Berlusconi. And what are we to make of possible indictments coming out of Italy, for we have it on the prime minister's authority that Italian prosecutors are a load of politically-motivated shysters-or is that just in prosecutions involving himself?
The arrest warrant debate also provides an interesting sideways view of the debate over who is integrationist and who isn't. One might expect the Brits to be opposed on sovereignty grounds and the Germans to be in favour on federalist grounds. Not a bit. The Germans have indeed talked favourably of a federal judicial space-but they don't like this idea because it is based on "mutual recognition" of each other's legal systems, thus obliging German judges to accept rulings and laws from dodgy southern Europeans. The Germans would prefer harmonisation of the relevant rules and criminal codes, presumably based on the German model. The British by contrast are in favour of the current model both on the familiar "tough on crime" grounds and because they think mutual recognition is a much lesser evil than a harmonised system, which would oblige the Brits to change cherished legal practices.
Turkish trouble
The crisis has complicated EU defence policy. The Turks have been blocking an agreement within Nato to give the EU rapid reaction force assured access to Nato assets-something the EU badly needs to declare the force "operational" by its December summit. The Europeans had been hoping that a mixture of US arm-twisting and reassurance would deliver Turkish agreement. But now the Americans are not inclined to start antagonising their major strategic ally in the Islamic world. The Turks-emboldened-are said to be laying down even tougher conditions.
But it is not just the Turkish side which is blocking an EU-Nato agreement. Their great adversaries the Greeks are also holding up agreement for reasons which are the precise mirror-image of the Turks. Indeed the Greeks seem to be so hostile to striking an EU-Nato deal that one official fumes, "I think the Greeks have forgotten that they are actually a member of Nato." n
