 You are all very welcome and I urge you as a matter of fact to switch off your mobile phones before we begin. We are very happy and indeed honoured to have, once again, Stefan Leene, who is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe to talk to us about the future of EU foreign policy. The future of EU foreign policy is a question I think that has been on the agenda for many years. Every so often we hear about a possible breakthrough. There are initiatives regularly emanating from the European Council, sometimes set down in treaty texts, but it is doubtful if we have in fact proceeded very much further than we were at when we signed the mass treaty. This despite very radical change in the world around us, the rise of China, the phenomenon of Donald Trump at the head of the country that is nearest to us in the European Union, apparently presenting challenges that have to be met, the question whether they are being met or can be met, is a very crucial one, which is why, Stefan, we look forward very much to hearing what you have to say. Thank you very much. It's indeed a great pleasure for me to be here again. Last time I spoke at the institute was I think in May or April 2016, and I spoke about Trump's foreign policy. I can promise you it's not going to be as scary, but it's also not going to be very uplifting either because I very much share your judgment that the European foreign policy has not developed in a sort of dynamic and positive fashion as we all thought it might 15, 20 years ago, sad for me particularly because I've been very heavily invested in this project. I was in a meeting with the Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneisel in Vienna a few weeks ago and she said that it's really frustrating to work at the Foreign Affairs Council because the ministers in particular from the big countries don't show up anymore. And I was shocked. I was shocked because I remember at my time with Kavi Solana, all the ministers were there at all councils and even when I was political director until 2011, still everybody was there and indeed the ministers from the big countries dominated the discussions, sometimes annoyingly so. And I checked with my colleagues in Brussels, my former colleagues in Brussels and they confirmed that indeed the participation in the Foreign Affairs Council is much faster than it used to be. And they also said that the ministers from the big countries, if they come at all, they come usually for a shorter period, not for the whole council, and they often don't talk. They interact with their mobile phones mainly. So I thought, well, maybe the world has become so harmonious and peaceful that foreign policy discussions in Brussels are just not relevant anymore. But if you think of it, it's not really the case. We have an ongoing geopolitical challenge from the east with a war in the Donbas continuing. Turkey has drifted away from the European Union, there's chaos in the Middle East and no prospect of any return to stability there. The migration challenge continues. The numbers are way down for the moment, but the challenge is there and will remain there. And then there's Donald Trump, who is sort of dismantling the multilateral order that his predecessors together with European leaders have established over decades. So not the time to relax one would think. So I offer you three alternative explanations, why the level of discussion in Brussels is not up to the level of the challenge. And the first one I must apologize to all current and former diplomats has to do with the fact that the foreign ministers and the foreign ministries have lost a lot of ground over the last 20 years. I think it's not so much the case in Dublin, as far as I can tell, but it's in the cold case, the case in most other capitals. For one simple reason, basically the international agenda has expanded dramatically. There are many more stakeholders, official stakeholders, but also in official stakeholders. Civil society is much more involved in foreign policy. And the foreign ministers have lost much of their sort of gatekeeper function. The line ministries have built up their international expertise and capacity, and therefore there is less need for the traditional role of foreign ministries. And even the coordination functions, which are still important in a number of countries, have tended to drift to the prime minister's office because international politics is a whole of government challenge. And ultimately, only the prime minister can be the really effective coordinator. And this development in the member states has been reflected also at the level in Brussels. The European Council has emerged as the place for all the really important relevant discussions on foreign policy, whether it comes to sanctions against Russia, whether it comes to saving the Iran nuclear deal, whether it comes to the next big step in the external management of migration. It's all taking place in the European Council. Some of these discussions are prepared at the level of foreign ministers, but many of them are not. And clearly, this rise in importance of the European Council in this area has meant a decline of the Foreign Minister's Council and of the foreign ministers who've been kicked out of the European Council after all following the Lisbon Treaty. Now, that is the first reason. The second reason has a lot to do with the high representative. When the Lisbon Treaty, they created a very important and powerful position, basically. They gave the high representative two additional heads, Vice President of the Commission responsible for external action and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Council, a very powerful function. But then when it came to implementing it, the member states didn't want to create a powerful person. So, ultimately, the two people we've had in this position so far, Katherine Ashton and Mogherini, they had many merits, hardworking people, focused people, in the case of Mogherini also very active in terms of presentation, putting a face to EU foreign policies. But ultimately, they both lacked the ability to be real players on foreign policy. The high representative is simply not high enough to interact with Putin, Xi, or in my other one. It's just not on that level. And if she takes initiatives, it makes proposals, she's very frequently shot down by the big member states. There are many cases that I can point to where that has happened. And when it comes to chairing the Council, the top priority of the high representative is to minimize controversy. She wants to do everything but leave the impression that the EU is divided. Therefore, if an issue is very controversial, it is not put on the agenda. And that has two consequences. The first consequence is without a discussion, the position still devolve, basically. The whole policy-making process stagnates. And the other consequence is going to be very boring. And many ministers don't find it worthwhile to actually go there. When the decision was taken to give this job of chairing the Council to the high representative, I was all in favor, because I thought this will really, following a little bit the model of NATO means a lot more continuity, a lot more coherence, and it was a very good thing. But I must say, in the light of the experience of the last few years, I think it probably was a mistake. Because I do think that leaving it to the old presidency system would have given more energy and dynamism to the discussions of the Council, and it wouldn't have become this kind of series of non-events that it is at present. The third reason, I think it goes much deeper. I think it has a lot to do with a change of paradigm of foreign policy. I was sort of in a next room when Kavir Solana drafted his security strategy in 2003, 2004. And at that time, the EU was at the peak of its confidence and felt really good about the future and its place in the world. Because we thought what was emerging is the liberal international order, where multilateral diplomacy will put in place rules-based regimes for all sorts of areas from climate change to non-proliferation, and that the EU, as a transnational cooperative body based on the rule of law, was somehow the model for the future of the world, basically. And we thought other regions would soon follow. Now it hasn't really happened like this. The consequence of this kind of world view was also, for instance, our neighborhood policy, which was a transformational policy, where we basically thought countries in the regions around Europe should become like us. We will help them to become like us, and then we would allow them to participate not fully but partially in European integration. And this approach did not work very well, to put it very mildly, because the partners in the region never bought into this concept, and EU member states never really supported it wholeheartedly either. So it was always more declaratory than in reality. And the world in reality has changed in the opposite direction. Famous American expert whose name I'm not entirely sure, like I said, the jungle has come back, has grown back. And I think that is very true. We are faced now with a multi-polar world, which is based on power politics. Power politics has come back in a very big way. Two weeks ago when Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil, I read somewhere that now all the biggest countries in the world are controlled, are the leadership of leaders with strong authoritarian tendencies, leaders that pursue a nation-first policy, basically, from Russia to the U.S. to China to India and Brazil now, too. And that, of course, and the methods have evolved, some of the old ones, basically. It's bullying, it is trade wars, it is espionage, it is murder as 15 recently in some cases. But this is combined to more modern methods like internet-based interference in elections, fake news and all that. And all this change has quite profoundly changed the idea of the EU's place in the world. We no longer feel as the vanguard of the new liberal world, we feel as a rather besieged most modern island in a sea of real politics. And the EU finds it very, very difficult to adjust its policies to this new situation. To some extent, this has happened in the sense that we have downgraded the transformational agenda quite dramatically. If you look, for instance, at the review of the neighborhood policy in 2015 or at Mogherini's strategy in 2016, you read very little about the transformation of the world that used to be at the very top of the agenda. The new keywords are resilience that appears 40 times in Mogherini's strategy and stability. So the whole outlook is much, much more cautious. But when it comes to actually engaging in diplomacy, the EU carries huge handicaps in this new world because it's very cumbersome processes based on consensus, seeking consensus are simply too slow to really act in a realistic way in what's going on. This almost limitless transparency where everything is leaked basically within minutes makes it impossible to have any kind of secret planning or deliberations. And the EU luckily lacks also the ruthlessness that most of the other big players in the world have these days. And I think the fact that we find it so difficult to really deal with this new multi-polar world based on real politics explains also why the member states are probably less committed to the common policy than they used to be. Theoretically, you could say now faced with this world, everybody needs to pull together and we will really work to confront these new challenges. But in reality, the member states have been in a way infected by the same tendency to prioritize their national policy and to some extent they've pulled back from the common foreign and security policy. There's still a lot of verbal commitments, but if you look at real evidence, for instance participation in council discussions, the picture is different. And also I think my colleagues from the external action service tell me it's very hard now to recruit first rate people from the big member states for the external action service because it's simply not interesting enough in terms of career. It's much better for a German to stay in the German service. And that was different some years ago. So it's sort of unsurprising that because of this situation, the record of European foreign policy is not impressive. There have been some wins and I think you know them, but I'll still name a few. I think the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue altogether was an achievement by Ashton and to some extent also followed up by Mogherini. It's now in a very critical and very interesting state. I think people are not very optimistic that the brakes can be achieved very soon. The Iran nuclear deal, definitely the European contribution was very important and useful, but it's now of course taken apart and sabotaged by Trump. You can also point to, well, fighting piracy around the home of Africa or efforts to stabilize the Sahel zones also I think on the positive side. As is, I think in my view, the EU-Turkey deal on refugees. Generally one can say that the one issue that really goes to the very top of the agenda is the external management of migration. And on that a lot of attention, a lot of political initiatives happened, a lot of money was invested and the results are there in terms of reducing the number of irregular arrivals quite drastically. But we are not there in terms of a genuine functioning partnerships with country of origin and transit. I think this will take a lot of time, a lot of effort to really build something up to make the whole management of migration really sustainable. But there's also a long list of negative things and I've mentioned just a few. Look at Russia for instance. I think that was maybe Merkel's most important achievement that she, the EU that was always extremely divided on Russia, that she pulled them together on the basis of the sanctions decisions. But the sanctions in a way became also a paralyzing element because everything was focused on keeping everyone together. So very few real initiatives were taken to break the deadlock. And of the EU, the EU institutions were locked out of the diplomatic process. Only France and Germany participated in the normative framework and they didn't manage somehow to move the situation beyond this kind of stalemate that where we are at the moment. This is mostly of course Vladimir Putin's fault, but somehow this kind of lock on the sanctions policy didn't help either. Then I think in Syria, the EU from the beginning didn't match its objectives. The removal of Assad declared policy with any kind of instruments that were contributing to that end. The sanctions policy was totally frustrated by the regional allies of Assad. And the EU was reduced to give it community and assistance and was basically locked out of the diplomatic process which was taken over by Turkey, Iran and Russia. And Libya is not much better. The EU member states were crucial in getting the intervention going in 2011, but then the EU was completely unable to address the post-revolutionary chaos in the country. There were many initiatives from France that totally contradictory to each other. Sometimes we didn't manage to really stabilize this place in any meaningful way. Now I've said many negative things too, but the two more factors that make foreign policy of the EU very difficult, one is of course the estrangement in the relationship with the United States. The United States has always been a participant of CFSP, participant of EU foreign policy. They were exerting a lot of leadership also in Europe. To some extent they sometimes planted reasonable and positive EU initiatives, but in many cases they managed to ensure cohesion among EU member states and also provided somehow the confidence that EU needed to act because to act together with the most important country in the world gave us the kind of confidence that this... and that has overcome the inherent risk averseness that is part of the EU system. And the fact that if the US pulls back from regions around Europe, this unfortunately doesn't mean automatically that the EU is ready to step in and compensate for this loss of engagement. Rather than filling the vacuum left by the US, the vacuum might fill the EU because we might not have the confidence and the strength to act on these issues. Now, the last negative factor is of course Brexit. The EU will lose on the 29th of March 2019, 16% of its GDP and it will lose one of its strongest foreign policy players. This is a huge catastrophe in terms of EU's image in the world. Simply, it has gained strength and prestige with enlargement over the years. Now the process is reversing and the kind of images really hurt in a very negative way. And of course the UK capacity will be very sorely missed. I read a day before yesterday an article by Fokker Perthes, who is a major German academic but also an actor because he worked I think as a deputy of the UN Special Envoy on Syria for a long time. And he says basically, I think his statement, this article starts with the phrase, common positions by the UK, by France and Germany have much more impact than any kind of position that might emerge from the conversation among the 27. So he says after Brexit these three countries should really work together even much more effectively and have as many common positions as possible. And that's the only way somehow to counter Trump's negative influence in the world. And I think this line of argument has some merit. I think it's probably true that these reactors, they are now all going to be together in the Security Council, have a weight that can be deployed for the good of the world. But from the point of view of the 24 other EU member states who are not part of this illustrious trio, it's very bad news basically. And I think in that sense Brexit could lead to a further weakening and quite an important weakening of the European Union. But now to the positive side, what could be changed to make things better finally? I think there are a number of institutional ideas floating around. One is the initiative by President Juncker to introduce voting by qualified majority on foreign policy issues starting with three areas. One is human rights. The second one is sanctions. And the third one is decision making on civilian ESDP missions. This can be done on the basis of the existing treaty. And it would be a good thing because it would remove an important blocking element from EU foreign policymaking, particularly on human rights. Recently it has become more and more common that some countries block anything negative on China, even on Egypt sometimes. The whole decision making on values has become very, very, very difficult because of the special relationships various countries have to important rising factors in the world. I think I'm wholeheartedly in favor, but I don't think it will actually happen. I think if you accept qualified majority voting, you'd de facto say that you give the common foreign policy precedence over your national foreign policy. And that's quite a far-reaching move. And I think many countries, particularly the smaller countries, who are much more likely to be outvoted than France or Germany, shy away from this. I would be interesting to see in the discussion how this is seen in Dublin, but I know that in Austria they are very worried about such proposals. So I believe maybe something very insignificant will happen in this direction, but nothing really important. In a way, the paradox is where member states would be ready to accept qualified majority voting. They can also find consensus. But if they can't find consensus, they can also not accept qualified majority voting. The second idea, very intriguing and interesting, but somehow very at the moment obscure, is Angela Merkel's idea to set up a European Security Council. She has said this repeatedly in the last few weeks, but the details are lacking. And there is so far not really a proposal on the table. And also the resonance from other member states so far hasn't happened. But essentially the basic idea seems to be that this would be a much smaller body than 27 member states, that it will meet quite frequently and take, consider ongoing developments in foreign policy and take decisions on them. And whereas the 27 then would discuss foreign policy much more rarely, once every half a year or once every year. I think the big difficulties with this, there's a question of treaty change. I don't think this can be done. If it involves decision making, it needs change of the treaty. I think it is, nobody quite knows how the decisions would be taken. Is that voting again? Is it consensus? It's a very difficult issue. But the most difficult issue is the composition of the body. Because you either have rotation, full rotation, and you have permanent seats for the big countries, basically like in the UN, according to the UN model. I think this would be a very hard sell to the small member states. Or you have equal rotation, which would mean that France and Germany are not part of the body for some periods. And that's equally difficult to envisage. So I don't think this is something that can move forward very quickly. It's very, very difficult. My own take on institution change would be much more modest. I think that one big problem of the existing system is that the high representative and the president of the European Council don't work well together. This has neither worked with Van Rompuy and Ashton, nor with Mogherini and Tusk. Sometimes I feel it's a problem of cultures, Italian and Polish cultures that are sort of difficult to bring together. But in reality, this has never worked out well. And this is really a shame, because I think if you could bring together the high rank of the president of the European Council with a machinery of the higher representative, you would have a great deal of potential. So if the European Council next June appoints a higher representative that is very, you know, hard-hitting and ambitious and a president of the European Council that is very interested in foreign policy, then these two together could really make things moving. But that's probably precisely because of that reason why such people will not be appointed. But I think there is a lot of potential in the machine at the moment. I think if you look at the resources of the EU delegations, of the missions, civilian and military missions, if you look at the expertise in the commission and in the external action service, if you really bring this together in an effective way, it is probably bigger than some of the big member states. The potential is absolutely there. But at the moment, all these expertise is not really brought together in a meaningful way. This is dispersed among the institutions. I think there could be a great deal more information sharing, much more strategic analysis. And if you have this and you have two people on top who are actually ready for a proactive foreign policy, it could actually start to make things move forward. But ultimately, I don't think, and I'm coming to the end, I don't think institutional change is really the key element in this. I think you cannot create a common foreign policy like you can create a common monetary policy. It's not a matter of timelines and criteria, et cetera. It is something that needs to be based on mutual trust between the participants. And this mutual trust can only be developed through the shared experience of common action, basically. And in that light, I have sort of three final suggestions and ideas that I would share with you. The first one is simply we need more action. I think that's the key thing to build this kind of expertise and mutual confidence. I think there is a great deal that can be tried. At the moment, for instance, the EU is totally locked out of the serious debate, but everybody knows that the EU is supposed to pay for reconstruction. So somehow to transform this leverage that we have into an actual role in the political process, I think it's worth trying. I think it's worth trying also to overcome the kind of Minsk blockage to look for the possibility of a new negotiation for a broader agreement on the Ukraine. I think when it comes to Libya, I think if France and Germany, France and Italy, for once, would pull together, there could be an initiative that can actually get off the ground and achieve real stability. Of course, many things will not work out. Foreign policy, inherently, is messy and complex. But I think that if you try hard enough and have more missions and more initiatives and more, you will get a different dynamic than what you have at the moment. The second element is I think I would advocate a much more direct engagement of member states in the European foreign policy process. I think as long as you have European foreign policy and national foreign policy on parallel tracks, it will not work out. Because no ambitious politician of the member states will be ready to invest in something in which he has or she has no real role or nothing to gain from. And I think the idea of tasking member states with particular crisis management moves regional policies, even a kind of thematic policies, giving them the leads or groups of countries, is very promising. This is another idea of not a new idea. It has been around for, I think, almost five, 10 years. But it has never happened. Because somehow there is too much stove piping, too much institutional rivalry, too little trust. But I think there's huge potential there. Because the member states still have enormous foreign policy resources. If you can get them involved in running foreign policy, there's a great deal to gain. And also in terms of support from the member states. If the Austrian foreign minister is a bad example for the moment. But if somebody gets tasked by the European Union with an important talk and has a success, then I think you will get also more public support for this policy. And the last point I think maybe for the next five, 10 years, the greatest task and the greatest priority might be to save multilateralism. I think it's very clear, and I've said at the beginning, that EU is much more suited to contributing to a liberal, well-functioning liberal world order than it is to survive in a world that is dominated by very messy and destructive power politics. And I think I recently talked to an EU ambassador in China and to an ambassador in Japan. And they both say that interest in the EU is certainly much higher since Trump is around. Somehow there is Europe as a partner in sort of defending elements of the multilateralist work is something that is appreciated. And I think there are a number of stakeholders from Australia, Canada, but also many countries in the development world which are committed to saving multilateralism. And the EU is uniquely positioned to be at the heart of an alliance of countries to work on this from climate change to nonproliferation to other issues. And I think to invest in multilateral institutions, to build up these partnerships, I think it's absolutely worthwhile and can bring results. I think all this will not suddenly turn the EU foreign policy into a vastly successful thing, but it could definitely turn the momentum around into something more constructive. I think that the institutional cycle that is now changing gives an opportunity to take some decisions that would open up the pathway in this direction. And I don't think this is an opportunity that we can allow to miss. Thank you very much.