EU parliamentary debate on the USA: being a player instead of a pawn – but how?

The EU Parliament has debated the relationship with the USA – and it is clear that Europe no longer wants to be the pawn of other interests. What that means in concrete terms – opinions differ.

It is the broken submarine deal between France and Australia that irritates many in Europe – the French government in particular. How could it be that Washington offended Paris in such a way, ignored closed contracts without further ado, disembarked France and supplied Australia with American nuclear-powered diving ships? And that too within a security partnership in which Great Britain is also involved. It is called AUKUS and is intended to be a signal and warning to China that the western powers there in the Pacific will not allow themselves to be pushed back by Beijing.

In all of this, the Europeans are apparently left out, worse still: with their interests they are even more or less ignored by the USA. But so high hopes were placed in the Democratic US President Joe Biden, in a new and revitalized transatlantic partnership after the Trump years. Now disappointment is spreading.

France in particular wanted today’s debate, it is said in the EU Parliament – as a sign that Europe is jointly expressing its lack of understanding of this tactical move by the USA, which is unheard of from the French point of view. But instead of being outraged about it, many MPs first and foremost admitted how important the European-American axis is now. The EU foreign affairs representative Josep Borrell called this partnership “alive”, but above all irreplaceable. The European side must, however, play a greater role in this. The AUKUS alliance was a wake-up call, said Borrell.

EU interests in retail unresolved

And so something like a European tenor emerged during the parliamentary debate in Strasbourg, which can be described as follows: The honeymoon with the Biden government is long over. We stay together, but: Europe must and will emancipate itself. How the EU would like to do this, however, remains a nebulous one.

The SPD MP and trade politician Bernd Lange referred to the joint trade and technology council with the USA, which had met for the first time in Pittsburgh last week – without deciding anything, but at least. Because France actually wanted to cancel the meeting because of the submarine business. For a long time, the committee named a platform on which one wanted to exchange ideas, but on which the Europeans would also have to defend their interests: especially in the case of still unresolved trade disputes with a view to the US tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the EU.

A transatlantic partnership is incomplete as long as there is no real foreign and security policy cooperation, said the Croatian EPP MP Zejlana Zofko. An indication that the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan has put the EU in a difficult situation – just like AUKUS and the submarine business. French MPs became clearer, some expressly demanding their own European security architecture – and distancing themselves from NATO.

Going your own way – and yet not without the USA

But these are all just demands. As long as the EU member states are not prepared to relocate foreign policy decisions to Brussels and actually speak with one voice, such debates in the EU Parliament and the appearances of Foreign Affairs Commissioner Borrell will always be one thing above all else: an expression of a certain helplessness.

And this is particularly evident in relation to the USA at the moment: On the one hand, they do not want to spoil themselves with the Biden government in Washington, because the EU knows very well that it cannot do without the USA and NATO, which is dominated by it, above all in terms of security policy; on the other hand, however, one would still like to be perceived as an independent global actor who goes his own way without the Americans – also when dealing with China. Unlike the USA, many in the EU do not see the Chinese primarily as a threat, but also as a potential trading partner. Hardly any European capital would want to give up the chances of good business.

So Europe wants a lot, all at once: strong transatlantic relations with traditionally its closest ally, but nonetheless its own global influence. One may no longer be the pawn of the other world powers and their interests. At least there is a certain consensus in the European Parliament on this – but not on how this should work.