It is regrettable that today’s “exchange of views” between members of the European Parliament and João Vale de Almeida, the newly appointed head of the EU office in Washington, DC, is taking place behind closed doors.  The EU-US relationship is at a low ebb and a breath of fresh air and plain speaking would be welcome. US President Barack Obama remains popular in Europe and French fries are back on the menu in Washington. But despite cordial contacts, the EU-US transatlantic relationship has yielded few diplomatic returns for either side. 

When Obama was elected 18 months ago, both the EU and the US wanted change. The US wanted its NATO allies in Europe to shoulder more of the fighting in Afghanistan. In a speech in Strasbourg last April on the 60th anniversary of the alliance, he called on “our friends and allies [to] bear their part of the burden”. Or as an insightful, less-diplomatic ‘translation’ by Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund puts it: “Without wanting to be rude – you are not indispensable for us, or at least not in the ways we’d like you to be.”

The EU got the message, but had pressing concerns of its own. It wanted the US to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in line with its own ideas, to get a new global agreement on climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Hopes cooled as the Obama team became the established administration. But there is a lack of substance at the heart of the EU-US relationship, which suggests more than simply mutual wish-lists fading in the harsh light of reality.

At first, Europe was slow in promising extra troops for Afghanistan, although several EU countries did agree to supply more troops for last year’s elections in Afghanistan. Some European countries promised still more in response to the US decision to send a further 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. But signs that Europe is rethinking defence spending and its military role in the world are less evident.

On climate change, Europe’s expectations were disappointed. The EU promised to deepen its own emissions-reduction pledge – from a 20% cut to a 30% cut by 2020 – if the US and other rich countries would only do the same. This strategy fizzled out at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December, when it proved not remotely interesting to the US or anyone else. (The US has anyway always maintained that it gets to the same emissions-reduction goal in the long run.) Meanwhile, a domestic US climate and energy bill is running into problems in the US Senate. Proposals for a ‘cap and trade’ system similar to the EU’s emissions trading scheme have been derided as “cap and tax”. The proposed legislation has lost momentum in the Obama administration’s pursuit of healthcare reform. Although it is too soon to write the obituary of the US climate and energy bill, when it arrives remains uncertain.

Common ground between the EU and the US has been easier to find on financial and economic reform. After initial disagreements on whether to go for a Keynesian approach of spending your way out of recession, EU and US regulators have developed similar financial stimulus plans and ideas on taxing bankers. An exception to the general harmony is the rumbling dispute over European Commission proposals to regulate hedge funds.

The economic crisis may have spurred efforts to reform, but across many less high-profile areas, co-operation is silting up. The Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), an EU-US round of meetings intended to remove barriers to trade, has become moribund. Launched with much fanfare in 2007, this tackled unglamorous business, such as harmonising accounting standards and attempting to resolve trade disputes over poultry. The TEC shows no sign of life. Another big idea of the last Commission and US administration is also showing diminishing returns. The latest ‘open skies’ talks on deepening competition in the transatlantic aviation market, have failed to resolve the issue of whether European airlines can buy majority stakes in US companies.

EU-US relations are not delivering enough either on headline issues of peace and security, climate change, or the below-the-radar business that the EU has most competence over. It is important not to exaggerate the problem. Transatlantic ties are deep and common values abound, although they should not be confused with common interests. It is true that Europe is far from being the Obama administration’s top priority, but, in a world of festering conflicts, nuclear proliferation and terrorism, that should not be surprising.

But the EU still needs to think how it can inject more substance into the relationship. Some signs of this new thinking are visible. Last month Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said that EU-US summits should take place only when they are needed, a point that sounds unremarkable, but is still a cold shower to EU diplomats and leaders who live by scheduled summits with pre-prepared conclusions.

But elsewere EU leaders are – like their American counterparts – distracted by domestic issues. They have not fully grasped that one of the EU’s most important bilateral relationships is stuck in a rut.

Click Here: Cheap FIJI Rugby Jersey