Europe’s divisions on display

It’s been a difficult few days for the notion of a common European foreign policy. Divisions were most public when EU foreign ministers debated whether to renew the bloc’s arms embargo on Syria. Eager to keep all options open, Britain and France argued against doing so. Austria, the Czech Republic, Sweden, and others supported reinstating it. The result was a decision to let each member go its own way. Via the New York Times:

The European ministers said it was now up to each member state to decide for itself whether to export weapons to the opposition, because the arms-export issue had been separated from the other sanctions.

In a sign of the tensions, the Austrian foreign minister, Michael Spindelegger, held an impromptu news conference late Monday warning that the end of the embargo risked creating a situation where “everybody is entitled to deliver weapons to the Assad regime or to the opposition.”

The failure to agree means that the European Union’s existing package of sanctions will lapse after Friday. But ministers emphasized that economic sanctions like asset freezes and travel bans on Syrian officials would continue.

The Syria question has military and strategic dimensions that have often complicated consensus in Brussels. Europe was sharply divided over both the 2003 Iraq war and the 2011 Libya intervention. Perhaps more troubling for the EU is discord over trade policy, usually an area where Europe has been able to speak with one voice. The Financial Times reports here that Beijing recently stoked disagreement inside the EU over whether the bloc should pursue a WTO case against China for allegedly selling solar panels below cost:

Beijing had rallied a majority of the EU’s member states against the commissioner’s proposal to impose provisional duties on Chinese-made solar products for dumping, or selling goods below cost.

In the final counting, 18 of the EU’s 27 member states opposed Mr De Gucht, according to people familiar with the case. Chief among them was Germany, the EU’s largest economy and home to the solar manufacturer that spearheaded the commission’s biggest ever trade investigation – covering some €21bn in Chinese exports in 2011.

“I would be lying if I said we did not consider it annoying,” an EU official acknowledged. “China,” he added, “is a country that knows extremely well how to play the divide and rule game using carrots and sticks.”

…[T]he informal vote has raised doubts about the strength of his hand as the case proceeds. The commissioner must have backing from member states to impose final duties in December, when the investigation is set to conclude. Without that threat, Mr De Gucht will also struggle to prod Beijing into settlement discussions.

Want more gloom about Europe’s foreign policy? Judy Dempsey writes here that the EU has proved all but incapable of engaging in joint strategic planning about regions outside the immediate neighborhood:

[A]ny kind of strategic thinking—if it exists at all—is still limited to the national level. It’s as if the EU’s common foreign and security policy, established twenty-one years ago, had no relevance. And even though most European governments know well that they are impotent when they try to act alone, the reflex of dealing with interests and security issues at a national level is simply too deeply ingrained.