The European Union at the UN Intersecting Multilateralisms

Conference
The European Union at the UN Intersecting Multilateralisms
Brussels, 5 July 2006

Address by Dr. Karen E. Smith, London School of Economics,
and by Dr. Riina Kionka, Acting Director for the UN, Council of the EU,
to the Royal Institute of International Relations (IRRI), Brussels, Belgium.

This is a transcript of the speeches. This is not an official record of proceedings and specific remarks are not necessarily attributable.

Karen E. SMITH

The genesis of the book that Katie Verlin Laatikainen and I edited was the excitement generated two years ago by the EU Security Strategy, which declared that one of the strategic objectives of the EU was to pursue ‘effective multilateralism’. Whenever policy makers throw out those sort of objectives, it is inevitable that academics will chase them to find out exactly what is going on and to what extent to which the EU is actually meeting them.

Facts and Figures

Our starting point was the EU's declared commitment to support the UN. One could argue that the EU is the UN's best friend. The EU should be able to pursue effective multilateralism, because it does constitute rather a large block in the UN. The 25 member states constitute 13% of the UNGA’s membership, not including various associated countries and like-minded countries. The EU member states contribute 38% of UN's regular budget, 40% of the peacekeeping budget (though they don't do so well in providing people for UN missions). The EU plus the member states are the largest aid donor in the world which means it is an important actor in terms of reaching the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Another strength is that the EU 25 states are spread amongst the three regional groups in the UN: WEOG, EUREST, Asia. So, in theory they should be able to vote more EU member states on to key bodies such as the UNSC, ECOSOC, the Human Rights Commission, etc. Given these facts, one would therefore think the EU could exercise considerable influence.

Core questions.

We came up with three core questions. One is quite an academic theme: how will the EU type of multilateralism fit with the UN's type of multilateralism? There are a lot of differences between these multilateralisms, but I will not elaborate on these here and how.

The second question concerns mechanisms of Europeanisation. What are the mechanisms for EU institutional coordination of member state positions within the UN, and are they becoming stronger? Are the EU member states converging at the UN? Are their national positions in the UNSC, UNGA, etc. becoming more and more similar and is this because of the EU’s institutional mechanisms? Is the EU exporting successfully its ideas and norms within the UN context?

The third theme concentrates on the notion of effectiveness. We defined three notions of effectiveness. The internal notion is quite related to the first concept of Europeanisation. Do the mechanisms for coordinating member state positions produce output? The second notion we wanted to explore was external effectiveness. Is the EU a leader or 'frontrunner' at the UN? Does it actually achieve its objectives, and influence others to support EU positions? The internal notion is linked to the external and the external is linked to the internal. The third thing we wanted to know was whether the EU is strengthening the UN's effectiveness. As Lord Hannay, the former UK ambassador to the EU, to the UN and to the High Level Panel, asked: 'can the EU rescue the UN?'

EU representation and coordination at the UN

What are our findings? We looked initially at the way the EU is presented at the UN. Here, of course, the problem of the pillar structure within the EU is clear. The Community pillar is an observer of several bodies within the UN, including the UN General Assembly, but the Commission generally speaks only on EC matters. On the CFSP side, the presidency will represent the EU, but to get anything to represent, the member states have to be engaged in a coordination process. This is an attempt by the member states to ensure cohesion in voting on matters that come before the General Assembly (and other bodies), to present resolutions on behalf of the EU, and to declare EU positions or views in debates. EU member state diplomats meet a lot, both in Geneva and in NY (1300 coordination meetings a year in NY, 1000 in Geneva).

The UN itself is also not a particularly straightforward organisation. In the UNGA, there is one member, one vote. But in the UNSC the UK and France are permanent members with a veto. This is an interesting challenge to the EU. Several EU member states are often elected from the regional groups to serve on the SC and currently, one third of the UNSC are EU member states. (Some observers might think that is too much ‘Europe’ on the UNSC, but in theory, the EU could even have six member states on the UN SC if they coordinated voting in the regional groups). So, the SC is a bit different and poses a challenge to the EU. But there is a caucus forming amongst those member states that serve on the UNSC. There are also regular consultations with the EU member states that do not serve on the UNSC and increasingly either the Presidency or Solana will speak in the UNSC on behalf of the EU. So there is more EU presence there.

To sum up, there is a growing clearly evidence of a strengthening of the coordination mechanism particularly in terms of the number of hours EU member state diplomats spend meeting with each other.

What do these mechanisms for coordination produce?

There is a clear tendency to produce more statements on behalf of the EU represented by the Presidency, the Commission or the High Representative, in the UNSC, in the UNGA and in the committees of the UNGA. In the book, I wrote the chapter on human rights and I looked at the number of resolutions the EU presents on human rights, which has tended to increase over time. Generally speaking, there are more EU-sponsored resolutions in the UNGA and its committees.
As for voting cohesion, the EU doesn't give us quite a nice picture. We looked at roll-call votes, rather than all votes, because roll-call votes require states to declare themselves. In 1991, 52% of the times that there were roll-call votes in the UNGA, the EU member states voted together. In 1999, the EU member states reached a high point of cohesion, but they haven't reached that since. There is no visible concrete trend towards more cohesion in voting amongst the EU member states. I saw this in voting cohesion within the Commission on Human Rights and in the Third Committe of the UNGA which deals with human rights. There is no clear trend downwards in the number of ‘split votes’ (where the EU member states did not vote the same way): voting cohesion is not necessarily getting better.

So on internal effectiveness, we see more statements and more resolutions presented, but voting cohesion is not a very positive story.

What are the effects of the EU on the rest of the UN?

I talked to a lot of EU member state diplomats in NY. Some of them express considerable frustration that some colleagues think that the most important thing is internal effectiveness and to get an EU agreement. That is impressive from an historical perspective, but of course within another organisation like the UN, the next step is more important. And that is what effect do these agreements have on the rest of the UN. Here, it is undeniable that the EU is recognised as a large group in the UN, and it can attract enormous support from its so-called 'sphere of influence' and beyond - from associated countries, like-minded countries, Japan, US, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and so on. It can gather together a large group of states behind a particular stance. But it can also spark automatic opposition, because it is a group of western, northern states. For example, I saw this in the field of human rights, where there is automatic opposition to any EU-sponsored resolution on Zimbabwe. This can also block some of the EU’s external effectiveness.

Another block is that the EU tends to be reactive, not proactive. There is an event, and the EU may or may not respond to it. It does not have the mechanisms in place to be able to be very proactive. It is also because the EU has its own agenda, its own way of setting its agenda, it own schedule. So, the EU has to adapt itself to the UN agenda, and not vice versa. There are some exceptions: for example, in environmental policy the EU is able to act as a pro-active leader.

A third limit on the external effectiveness of the EU in the UN is the limited time for 'outreach'. Member state diplomats spend a lot of time talking amongst themselves. This means that they do not have much time to do outreach. There are thus limited opportunities to engage in diplomacy with other groups and countries about the EU's position.

A fourth limit is that if diplomats spend seven hours in a meeting per day in the Commission on Human Rights (for example), reaching an EU position, going over every single comma, dotting every single i, the resulting decision is not going to be very flexible. Some theorists may argue that this is a strength, but throughout the entire UN system, this tends to be rather a weakness. It doesn't allow the EU to function as a middle power, able to act as a bridge between the west and the south.

So, broadly there is a growing awareness of the EU as a block, but this doesn't necessarily translate into influence on the UN. Some of the reasons stem from the nature of multilateralism within the EU itself.

The last issue we discussed in the book was whether or not the EU is making the UN more effective.

The EU clearly is an important actor at the UN. EU support is crucial to get movement within the UN. But we were quite disappointed at the EU's impact on reform, especially on the reform agenda of 2005. Kofi Annan had practically begged the EU to help overcome the crisis that still is wracking the UN. Some observers have stated that the EU was not ready for such a leadership role. Part of the problem was that the UN reform agenda included - some might say mistakingly - the issue of the UNSC reform. Members states are divided over this reform and for a while, that paralysed discussions in the EU about UN reform. Furthermore, the EU member states have different positions on disarmament issues, on contribution to peacekeeping, post-conflict missions, and so forth.

One striking thing was that at crucial moments the EU was very silent. The Presidency was held by the UK in the fall of 2005, but Blair's speech to the UN summit in September didn't mention the EU position (although it did figure in Jack Straw' speech and in a contribution of the EU to the summit). There were also some tensions between member states and the EU institutions over representation on new bodies (eg the new Peace Building Commission). The support for the new Human Rights Council (HRC) was very strong amongst the EU, but in the end, their support could not get the UNGA to agree to proposals on HRC membership. So, the EU is clearly supporting UN reform, trying to make the UN more effective, but isn't quite punching at the weight one might expect it to.

Our general conclusion was not necessarily pessimistic, but somewhat subdued. We think that there has been a strengthening of the EU's institutional capacity at the UN but basically, it is still not completely matured. If the EU was to continue strengthening its own voice and presence at the EU, perhaps it might have an impact at the UN. Perhaps, we will see, particularly in the light of the rejection of the draft constitutional treaty, that both multilateralisms at the UN level and the EU level are set for a period of muddling through. We do not yet see any large step forward in strengthening multilateralisms.

Thank you".

Speech given by Riina KIONKA

My feeling is that the book suffers from a kind of schizophrenic approach. On the one hand, there is a strong feeling amongst some of the authors that the EU should be treated as a state. In the concluding chapter, K.E. Jørgensen expresses his astonishment at how well he is able to explain the EU's behaviour or the EU's proclivity for using multilateralism by using a stated-centered approach to explain external factors: political systems etc. That is a little bit misguided in the EU's case, because the EU is not a state. The CFSP is a purely intergovernmental part of policy. We should not forget that.
On the other hand, some authors seem to be thinking in strictly governmental terms. There seems to be an overfocus on the UNSC in the book. Why? It is already clear that this is the major fault line. The UK and France are permanent representatives and obviously, this colours everything the EU does in the UN and especially in the UNSC. There are many other bodies which could be more productive to examine when looking for instances of EU-UN cooperation. When two member states have a veto and the others don't or they are not represented, then, there are very few conclusions that can be drawn.

There could have been a little bit more historical context. We should remember that the EU has been in the business of foreign and security policy only snce 1999.. Solana's position was created in that year. The first ESDP operation was launched only in 2003. There has been an astounding process ever since then. There have been 14 operations launched to date. In August last year, the EU was in Asia in an operation for the first time. This is an extremely steep learning curve we are looking at in EU behaviour. It is too bad that it was not taken into account in some way. There was voting convergence in the GA but on the ground, convergence and political thinking are very different between the '80s and today.

The fundamental problem of the constitutional treaty is mentioned a number of times in the book. This is a problem that is not going away soon. We hear grumblings of possible modus vivendi when the German Presidency starts etc. But it is clear that the two referenda are a major blow to the whole idea of a common approach in the UN and across the board. This is a big question.

There are a few specific points that I found interesting. Concerning the UN reform effort, I think we are talking about a duck policy. A duck policy is where you have ducks swimming. At the surface of the water, the duck looks calm, listening to the birds, floating aimlessly , nothing important is going on. But beneath the surface, the duck is paddling like mad; something is happening all the time. We have here a duck policy, because from my point of view, there were intensive actions and consultations within the EU on UN reform. It started from the very beginning when the Secretary General came out with the idea. It was mentioned in the EU Security Strategy. The EU submitted a report to the High Level Panel with suggestions as to the way the reform effort could go. It was discussed in detail in Brussels, Geneva and NY in various groupings of the EU.
There was a major outreach program that was conducted by the EU to convince third parties that reform was a good idea. More than a hundred demarches were delivered last summer, when the talks began on the draft outcome document. The very last week of the vote, when the American delegate to the UN put a certain brake on all kinds of reform, it was the UK presidency that took a leading role in breaking that impasse. There was a lot going on beneath the surface; I'm a little bit surprised about the way this is handled in the book.

A very interesting chapter is the one on the converging of views of the central and eastern European countries. Being a former Estonian diplomat, I know a little bit about this from first hand experience. There is some discussion in the book that those countries came quickly to espouse EU general points of view in voting patterns. This was taken as evidence of internal coordination, whereas there was another explanation for that: most of the central and eastern European countries have a more narrow scope of interest than some of the larger and older member states. It is easier in a political sense, if you do not have a certain national interest in x-countries, to converge with the EU line and thus to be seen as being constructive. The Baltic case is another point. There is a suggestion in the book that convergence of the three Baltic States with EU positions was a little bit lower, because there were ongoing problems with the Russian Federation. In fact, there was uneven support wihtin the EU itself for some of those resolutions. For four years in a row, there were competing resolutions on Russian troop withdrawals on the one hand and on human rights on the other. It was not because the Baltic States couldn't get Russia of their minds that they converged less than other Central and Eastern European states, it is because the EU demonstrated less support for the Baltics than they expected on those competing resolutions.

I'll make one more comment on the Middle Power's chapter. The argument was that Middle Powers are taking over the role that the Nordics used to have. I don't know what the added value of that chapter was.

Some suggestions that I would like to make to improve this already good book. It is not clear who the audience is for this book: academics, specialists, practitioners? I personally like the theoretical part of the book, but some of my colleagues at the Council Secretariat found it is to be too much theory. I wonder if the predominance of theoretical constructs was calibrated to the audience.
I wonder whether some of chapters would have benefited from interviews with practitioners. Dr. Smith's chapter was very good in that respect. There is a lot of realism there, she made good use of interviews. In other chapters, it was not clear whether the author spoke to the policy makers. Finally, I have a suggestion for the second edition: I would like to read the answer on the question 'why the EU doesn't make better use of its status of financial power house in seeking to induce change?' Thank you.

Q& A session

1) A remark by someone from the audience:
"I think one should consider not so much volume of activity, but rather the quality of activity when judging the EU coordination in NY and Geneva. There is also scope for reform of EU coordination at UN. In my view, it is necessary to have a better focus on real policy making. Do the statements really say something? Perhaps EU coordination should be more concerned with the content of what the EU is trying to achieve.
When it comes to the matter of dotting i's, one should give more scope to the Presidency and the Commission, to actually implement themselves a meaningful policy framework which would not waste so much time trying to achieve consensus among the 25 member states. This would increase the effectiveness. We have other issues like coordination within the EU structure between the higher and lower levels. EU coordination between Brussels and Geneva and New York is also important. The basic issue is how we could improve the quality of EU's activities.
Concerning the issue of UN reform, it is a subject itself. Reform of the UNSC is one thing and reform of another UN body is another thing. One needs to consider each issue on its merits rather than just saying: well, UN reform is necessary without any reasonable focus on what we want to achieve."

2) A remark from ambassador Thuysbaert: "I would like to thank you for your interesting speech. I have been ambassador in Geneva in 1985-87. I just wanted to give some inside information. I think that it is difficult to look at the coordination issue purely on statistical basis. One should not forget that in foreign policy there is no real common policy. There are mechanisms to try to achieve consensus. But this is much more based on human dimensions. It is not like voting, it is always left to the chair who takes initiatives or not. Look at the presidencies: some are extremely effective.
Second, a consensus of the EU member is important. If in a meeting, you do not have a consensus within the EU, you will not have an outcome in the UNGA. A consensus has a strength, it is already a balance. It is also dynamical. In those coordinations, people are looking not only at what their proposals can be, but they also want to exchange information etc. Normally, EU delegates are the best informed people in those meetings, because they start asking and exchanging information. It is the place where you can have a general evaluation of the ongoing negotiations elsewhere.
A last thing, when I was in Geneva, there was coordination in all the meetings. We were looking at all the issues that would be dealt with. In one our, you had a clear picture of what could be done... Depending on the human factor, you will never have a 100% result.

3) Question: "I appreciated the way you represented your findings. We hear from year to year about the reform of the UN. How do you combine this sense of re-activity versus pro-activity with a world where the size and diversity of the problem is growing very fast?

Answers

Karen E. Smith:
"On the historical context, EU reform policy began in 1970 with the creation of the European political cooperation. Three years later, it was decided that European political cooperation would coordinate positions in international institutions and important arenas.
I completely agree with the fact that quality is important. First of all, the UN should be thinking about that. Who reads UNGA resolutions? Most people in the world, outside of elite circles, do not read them. They are not exciting stuff, with exception of the UNSC debates and resolutions. There is some emphasis on the UNSC in the book because I think it is crucial; it is the body that actually can compel other states to do things: SC resolutions are binding.
Concerning the quality of EU results, we should also think about the lack of coherence between what the EU does in its external relations in general and what it does in the UN. The two things do not necessarily go together. Priorities that are declared outside of the UN are not reflected in the diplomacy within the UN in terms of what the EU wants to put forward as a resolution. What will they do in the UN? There is particular room to take a much more strategic perspective concerning what the EU is trying to do in the UN as well as what it thinks the UN should be doing in general. I don't think that it is unrealistic to think that the EU has a major role to play in trying to make the UN work. It could in theory contribute much and it is rather disappointing that it has not yet done so.
Thank you.

Riina Kionka
I agree on your comment about quality versus quantity. The problem is transparency. There are a few states that would be willing to agree on the fundamentals and leave the dotting i's and the crossing of the t's to the Commission or the Council secretariat assisting the Presidency. I think this is future music. Then, we could speed up the process and spend less time and energy on coordination among 25 and more on outreach to third countries.
I agree on the point made about more coordination on EU structures. When discussing this book, I wondered what it would look like to have coordination between the PSC and the member states in NY. How would it work? We couldn't really imagine that for a number of reasons. A good point that the book makes is that very often the Member states send their best senior diplomats to the UN. The ambassadors who sit in the PSC are a little more junior and are certainly not in a position to be telling their colleagues in NY what to do, even as a body. That is an excellent point.

How should the citizen react on these calls for reform? Some of these calls have an impact! One example is the Peacebuilding Commission. This is a new advisory body created last year at the Millennium Summit. It was a direct reaction to a clearly written report by ambassador Brahimi on what the UN could do to manage crises better. Three years later the Peacebuilding Commission was established. Here, we saw a practical approach. I wouldn't lose hope!