Debate: The future of EU-US relations
Date: TUESDAY, 5 OCTOBER 2021
Speaker: Josep Borrell Fontelles
Language: EN

It is like this and it has to continue being like this. There should be no doubt about that. This year you launch the renewed Joint Transatlantic Agenda, after a very successful European Union summit with the US, and there have been strong partnerships and engagement with the US administration, certainly much more, in a better way, than in the previous one.  Transatlantic partnership is vital and irreplaceable, but we need to place it on a stronger footing. August has been a wake—up call and there are changes in American society that have been in the making for many years that will certainly affect the role of the US in the world. After Afghanistan, the US has been sending a clear message about how they want to reorder their priorities, mainly facing China, and we should be ready to adapt to this new situation and shoulder our part of the burden to keep peace and security in the world.  I had regular discussions with Secretary Blinken during the UN General Assembly (UNGA) week, and I will travel to Washington next week to meet him again. He is in Paris today and I will be in Washington next week, so our links will be increasingly important and hopefully will deliver. These meetings are important for our ongoing discussions on issues related to the transatlantic agenda that have to be put in the frame of the developments in the world because we have to think about how the 21st century will be. Will the 21st century be born on Tiananmen or will it be born on the fall of the Berlin Wall? These two events – so different – mark the different paths of the future, how the future will be. We will be depending on our capacity to strengthen the trans-Atlantic relationship in order to defend democracies in the world. I take note of the references in your report to the need to foster greater self—reliance in matters of defence. On this point of view, I’m going to jump to French.  Il faut reconnaître l’importance stratégique de l’engagement que le président Biden a pris avec le président Macron lors d’une conversation qui a été courte peut-être, mais sans doute très importante à propos de la région indo-pacifique, y compris dans le cadre stratégique que l’Union européenne vient de publier sur cette région du monde. Dans le cadre de la lutte contre le terrorisme, les États-Unis se sont engagés à renforcer leur soutien aux opérations antiterroristes au Sahel menées par les États européens. Dans cette communication, les États-Unis ont également reconnu l’importance d’une défense européenne plus forte et plus performante, qui contribue positivement à la sécurité transatlantique, en complémentarité avec l’OTAN. Oui, l’espace euroatlantique est au cœur de l’OTAN. L’OTAN est l’outil fondamental de notre défense collective. Mais la gestion des crises dans le voisinage européen doit nous concerner nous, les Européens, en premier lieu. Cette communication ouvre la porte à des développements futurs, dont les chefs d’État ou de gouvernement vont discuter ce soir en Slovénie et qui seront suivis par la présentation de la boussole stratégique au mois de novembre.  These steps will strengthen our collective commitment to the US crisis management and enhance, as the report points out, our instruments and mechanisms. We are working on a new joint EU—NATO statement by the end of the year to renew those of 2016 and 2018, but our dialogue with the US is not only in the framework of NATO because not all European Member States are members of NATO and there are many NATO members who are not European Union Member States. So we have to have a direct and complementary relationship and a US—EU strategic dialogue.  We discussed with Secretary Blinken in the UN General Assembly about how this dialogue and cooperation can be strengthened. We agreed on the need to put in place a system to avoid issues like the one around the AUKUS pact between Australia, the UK and the USA in the future and, as your report recommends, we must also launch a dedicated dialogue on security and defence. Certainly, we also call for a closer transatlantic foreign policy coordination and you can rest assured that we will continue to cooperate and partner with the US in key foreign and security policy areas, mainly in front of the development of China, both from the economic, political and military point of view. But, as President Biden also said in his United Nations speech, we are not willing to restart a new cold war with China.  Also in the Western Balkans, I have to say that our cooperation with the US is much better. The recent crisis between Kosovo and Serbia has been solved thanks to the good work of our special envoy, Miroslav Lajčák. I have to say that our cooperation with the US envoy has been very positive.  We also report on the significance of the transatlantic economic relationship. We had a successful inauguration of the Trade and Technology Council in Pittsburgh and it is clear that we now have a framework with the potential to make joint progress on global economic and technological challenges. I think that it is very important to seize this opportunity because the world of tomorrow will be shaped around technological developments. Who masters technology will master power, and at that moment we Europeans will need to develop our technological capacities much more quickly. This can be better done together with the US, but not without also talking about the issues on which we can disagree. There are some difficult issues: to secure the change of supply in the field of semiconductors, to be sure that we are not going to create in the future an overcapacity, to talk about tariffs, data protection, and artificial intelligence. These are an incredibly broad set of issues that will shape the future and on which we have to engage more with the US.  A last word about COP26. We look forward to continuing our close coordination with the US to get every country to do more to fight climate change. Yesterday, I was in Saudi Arabia talking about it. It was sometimes a difficult discussion because we Europeans only have eight per cent of global emissions. Even if we cancel them tomorrow – zero emissions – the problem would be the same. The remaining 92% would still be there. So we have to work together with the US, especially on the recently announced Global Methane Pledge, because we talk about CO2 but there are other gases which also have a strong capacity to destroy the atmosphere, and methane is one of these.  This Global Methane Pledge will be another occasion for us to cooperate with the US on climate change. In September, our Executive Vice—President Timmermans and US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Kerry co-chaired the second meeting of the High—Level Climate Action Group, which is one of the key deliverables of our EU—US summit.  Finally – and it really is finally – let me underline that the recent announcement on the lifting of travel restrictions, Croatia’s access to the visa waiver programme and the launch of the joint COVID-19 Manufacturing and Supply Chain Taskforce, thanks to the good work of Commissioner Breton, are also positive developments linked to our joint agenda that will benefit the whole world. Because if we, the US and the EU, work together, the world will be vaccinated more quickly.  In conclusion, the recommendations that you make in your report are very timely. It is a long report that has a lot of issues in it. Our relationship with the US is certainly the stronger pillar, our freedom and prosperity. We have to continue building on it but, at the same time, we have to continue building our autonomy because our interests will not always exactly coincide. This report is very timely. I thank the rapporteurs for that. I thank the Members in this debate for their contribution to what they can do on this very important issue.