DICKEY: What is changing in Brussels? PATTEN: All of us in the new commission recognized that things simply couldn’t go on as they were. We have to be more open, more accountable and more efficient. In my own area, Javier Solana [EU high representative for foreign and security policy] has been appointed as the representative of the foreign ministers, and we have to work in tandem with him to give a cutting edge to the European Union’s contribution to international affairs. We have to make our assistance and development programs more focused, more flexible, more rapid than they’ve been in the past. We’ve got to clean up our act and sharpen our performance.
How are you and Solana supposed to work together? Solana comes to the job with the political authority of the foreign ministers of the EU. I come to the job with the competencies that the commission has, which are principally in the field of trade and in development assistance. He has as much knowledge as anybody conceivably could have on the security and defense issue. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be able to contribute my views to the debate on peacekeeping, or about conflict prevention. I don’t think that there’s going to be any difficulty with falling over one another’s feet. There’s plenty for both of us to do. We’ve already done two visits together, to Kosovo and to Algeria. We won’t always be traveling in tandem, but very often I’m sure we will continue to do so.
But doesn’t this raise the question Henry Kissinger once asked about “who speaks for Europe”? I think the Kissinger question, frankly, was a bit smart-alecky.
But you and Solana are two different voices for what is supposed to be one EU foreign policy. You know it’s more complicated than that. Why only two? There are 15 foreign ministers who are trying to develop a common foreign and security policy. They’ve chosen to have somebody to help provide a focus for policy. But that doesn’t mean that Madeleine Albright won’t want to be on the phone regularly to the German foreign minister or the French foreign minister or the British foreign minister or the Dutch or the Swedish… In my experience, Madeleine Albright phones up several ministers. But I still think that the point of view in Washington is that it’s better to have a couple of people as the focus for contact rather than nobody–or a dozen.
Can you define EU foreign policy more clearly today than six months or a year ago? There is a general perception post-Kosovo that we need to do more as Europeans within the NATO context to provide for our own defense, but that we also need to take on jobs which are about coping with the consequences of conflict, or helping to prevent conflict. So I think there are a number of areas in which Europe is trying to pull things together more coherently, but it’s the beginning of the process, and if you ask me where we will be in five or 10 years’ time, it’s extremely difficult to know.
How do you get 15 different countries to define a European policy toward Russia? Europe is anxious to avoid a situation in which the boundaries of an enlarged EU, which we will see in a few years’ time, mark a sort of precipice with Russia on the outside in terms of security, stability, prosperity. So it’s really an attempt to avoid that happening, as far as possible–all of it greatly tested at the moment, of course, by what is happening in Chechnya.
Any hope of Russia pulling back on Chechnya? It’s very, very difficult to comprehend what the Russian long-term strategy is. They continue to assert that they want to have a negotiated settlement, but who on earth are they going to negotiate with? I think it’s extremely depressing and very worrying.
Is there much daylight between American policy and European policy on China? I don’t believe there is. We are both determined not to allow the Chinese to play Europe off against America, and America off against Europe.
Is there any area where you see yourself fundamentally at odds with the U.S.? I hope not. There was very considerable European distress at the votes in the U.S Senate on the test-ban treaty. But that’s not a difference between us and the administration. There was, I think, a strong feeling in the EU that this was a serious step backward, that it sent all the wrong signals to South Asia, to China, to Russia, and there’s a general hope that the Senate might think again.
