Long-planned EU operation yields diplomatic triumph

While U.S. leaders exult over capturing bin Laden, the leaders of the European Union are high-fiving over securing full speaking rights at the UN General Assembly: The EU on Tuesday was given almost all the rights in the global chamber that fully-fledged states enjoy after the General Assembly backed 180 to two a resolution giving ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

While U.S. leaders exult over capturing bin Laden, the leaders of the European Union are high-fiving over securing full speaking rights at the UN General Assembly:

While U.S. leaders exult over capturing bin Laden, the leaders of the European Union are high-fiving over securing full speaking rights at the UN General Assembly:

The EU on Tuesday was given almost all the rights in the global chamber that fully-fledged states enjoy after the General Assembly backed 180 to two a resolution giving the bloc, which until this week only maintained observer status at the UN, the union the right to speak, the right to make proposals and submit amendments, the right of reply, the right to raise points of order and the right to circulate documents.

There will also be additional seats put in the chamber for the EU’s foreign policy chief, High Representative Catherine Ashton and her officials.

Ashton and her team have lobbied heavily over the last six months, according to her representatives, with a major offensive in the last 48 hours by the high representative herself in New York, to push through the changes after the EU was dealt a surprise defeat last September when other regional blocs voted against a similar resolution.

She declared herself "delighted" at the win, which, she said: "will in future enable EU representatives to present and promote the EU’s positions in the UN."

Details are trickling out of Brussels. Sources say that Lady Ashton monitored the historic vote from the EU’s command center. "We got it!" she reportedly exclaimed when the coveted power to make points of order was confirmed. Meanwhile, one senior European source said that a team of External Action Service commandos installed the new chairs in the General Assembly hall even before the formal vote granted them the right to the seats, though an EU spokesperson has vigorously denied that charge. "This operation was legal and moral in every respect."

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

Tag: EU

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