“Sofagate” is what has focused minds in the “Brussels bubble” this week, with many expressing indignation over how during a meeting in Ankara between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, only two chairs were foreseen, ending in Von der Leyen having to be content with a spot on the sofa, before uttering a clear “ehm?!”.
Yah not supposed to be like this
pic.twitter.com/0ru16B9sq8— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) April 6, 2021
Belgian MP Darya Safai – once a women’s rights activist in Iran – spoke for many when stating that von der Leyen was “humiliated”, adding that “yet again Europe is bowing to a regime that violates women’s rights”.
Some cartoonists had a field day:
#SofaGate pic.twitter.com/zFamDODjzu
— zaza (@zazacartoons) April 8, 2021
The incident was followed by some arguing that it was actually right to prioritise Charles Michel, given that as the Chairman of the body gathering the leaders of EU Member States, he would enjoy priority over the President of the European Commission. Former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker waded in, stating that in his time, it was “clear for everyone that, from a protocol point of view, the president of the Council is No. 1, and the president of the Commission is No. 2.”
Still, during past meetings between Juncker and Erdogan which also included the European Council President, three chairs were put. In any case, the current European Commission President obviously does not agree with it, as a spokesman said she should have been treated “exactly in the same manner” as Michel. Incidentally, the Turkish side blamed rivalry among Michel and von der Leyen for the confusion, claiming that Michel’s staff had agreed on the seating.
The whole thing reminds of how U.S. President Obama in 2010 called off a Summit with European leaders after discovering that no fewer than three EU presidents – also including the Spanish PM, as Spain was holding the rotating EU Council Presidency – would line up to shake his hand. In other words, the EU’s so-called “Kissinger question” – former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once famously asked: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?” -has still not been solved. In 2011, during an EP speech, Brexiteer leader Nigel Farage mocked the multitude of “Presidents” at the EU level, saying “Goodness me, even I am a President.”
This kind of institutional amateurism can simply serve as yet another – rather unimportant – indication of the weakness of the EU’s attempts to roll out its own foreign policy.
It is of course true that EU member states largely control foreign policy and that due to the fundamental differences between member states, it will never be easy for an EU foreign policy administration to make a difference.
One should add the weak legitimacy appointed officials like Ursula von der Leyen or Charles Michel enjoy. At the end of the day, even if they sometimes act like politicians and even if they use to be politicians, they really are no longer real politicians. In reality, as appointees to an international bureaucracy, they lack the strong legitimacy enjoyed by Foreign Ministers that are often heavy weights in their political parties and can make or break government majorities back in national capitals.
One cannot blame any of the two for that, and this is also a handicap of the EU’s would-be foreign service, the “European External Action Service” or EEAS.
Still, none of that can excuse the overall poor performance of the EU’s foreign policy machinery since it was created by the Lisbon Treaty in 2009.
It had already started badly. In a 2014 report, the EU Court of Auditors complained that the EEAS was “rushed and inadequately prepared, beset by too many constraints and vaguely defined tasks”.
Media stories of wasteful vanity projects, about the EEAS ordering crystal glassware, silver cutlery and fine china, embellished with the Flag of the EU, engraved on the drinking glasses and painted in gold, all to host banquets and dinner parties for visiting dignitaries, are only a detail here.
More problematic are the actual foreign policy blunders.
In April 2020, the New York Times exposed how the EEAS had “bowed to heavy pressure from Beijing,” as “European Union officials softened their criticism of China this week in a report documenting how governments push disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic”. This happened while European governments were firmly condemning China’s supression of information, which had worsened the Covid crisis.
To add insult to injury, the EEAS did not change course even after having been caught out. A spokesman accused journalists of focusing on “small, petty, partial details”, dismissed suggestions that the disinformation report had been rewritten as a consequence of Chinese influence, and insisted all changes were made as part of an “editorial process” instead.
Another incident, shortly afterwards, saw EU ambassadors publishing an opinion piece in the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, China Daily, with the EEAS having agreed to censor a reference to the fact that the coronavirus had emerged “in China”.
Also here, a top EEAS official defended the move, at least at first. He was reprimanded later. In a sharp condemnation of the EEAS for this, the chairman of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Norbert Röttgen, stated: “First the EU ambassadors generously adopt Chinese narratives and then the EU representation on top accepts Chinese censorship of the joint op-ed.”
One could argue that the EU’s foreign affairs diplomacy may not be taken overly serious, but that it could at least be a moral voice for good. Still, even here, the EEAS and the would-be EU Foreign Minister, officially called “High Representative of for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy”, haven’t made a great impression so far.
Federica Mogherini, the predecessor of the new office holder, Josep Borell, dragged her feet in November 2019 to condemn the Iranian regime for killing protestors during anti-regime protests, whereby ultimately about 1500 people were killed. Only after six days, after hundreds of people had already been killed and despite the warnings of human rights groups, a statement was issued, and then not even by her, but by a spokesperson. Never mind how Mogherini was enthusiastically wearing a headscarf when meeting the regime, which can’t be seen as very sensitive to the millions of Iranian women that are forced to wear one, despite the fact that it the Iranian regime itself considers it optional for foreign dignitaries to do so.
It ultimately took until March 2021 for the EU to respond and impose targeted sanctions on Iranian officials seen as responsible for the killings. Here, it should be noted that the jury is still out on how effective these new kinds of “Magnitsky” – style sanctions, intended not to hurt the population, are.
Another illustration is how the EU ambassador to Cuba recently pontificated that he “of course” does “not consider Cuba to be a dictatorship.” Even more mistakes by this particular caused EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borell to fire him. When he was appointed, Borrell himself was described by Politico as “Europe’s undiplomatic envoy”, as he leaves behind him a long string of diplomatic incidents from his days as Spanish Foreign Minister. Noteworthy is also his recent misjudgement to hold a press conference with the Russian Foreign Minister, which was used by the latter as an opportunity to stoke up tensions.
Also problematic is what the EU is not doing.
The European Union is the world’s greatest donor of development aid, spending 75 billion euro per year. Specifically for Syria, it is also the greatest donor, having spent more than 24 billion euro since the civil war broke out. Turkey, the world’s 18th biggest economy, is the biggest recipient of EU development aid, receiving 2.4bn euro every year.
Emergency aid may be a good idea, but actual “development aid” has a poor track record to actually help develop countries. Given this, one would expect the EU to use its existing spending programmes as leverage to try to do something good, either when it comes to reigning in human rights violations committed by the governments that receive a lot of EU money or by using it to help improve a problem deeply concerning to many Europeans: uncontrolled migration.
Unfortunately, that is not what the EU or its foreign service do.
A report by Carnegie Europe points out that while “the EU is changing its internal rules for allocating funds to avoid bankrolling authoritarianism” inside the EU, “it should do the same for its external aid”, noting that “its current funding of various authoritarian-leaning regimes overseas sits uneasily with the EU’s internal efforts to condition funds on political values and clashes with the union’s goals for international development and foreign policy.”
The details are truly damning for the EU:
“Most external EU funds still go to nondemocratic regimes. In 2018 and 2019, just over 84 percent of EU funds went to authoritarian and hybrid regimes, up slightly from the previous five-year period. The EU remains wedded to the use of direct financial assistance to partner governments around the world; in 2020, the commission estimated that budget support “accounts for about 40 percent of [EU] national cooperation programmes with partner countries.”
Since these funds go straight to partner governments, budget support operates similarly to the EU structural funds for member states now subject to rule of law conditionality. In the last decade, the EU has provided either general or sector-specific budget support to several governments guilty of significant human rights abuses such as Egypt, Laos, Morocco, Myanmar, Rwanda, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Uganda, and Vietnam. There is actually little overall correlation between EU external financial assistance and democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”
Also the idea to use the EU’s foreign spending leverage to deal with uncontrolled migration, which undermines European democratic support for regular migration flows, not to speak of the migrants drowning at sea, is simply way outside of the Brussels policy consensus.
A 2018 decision by EU leaders to negotiate with non-EU countries like Tunesia or Egypt to convince them to bring people saved at sea over there, at “disembarkation centers”, so those entitled to asylum can be distinguished from those that are not, ultimately also killing the business model of human smugglers, has ended up in nothing. Egypt, Albania, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria simply openly rejected the idea, despite the fact that these countries all enjoy EU financial support, which is often suffering from “endemic corruption”, according to the European Court of Auditors.
The obvious thing to do would be to link EU development aid spending not only with hosting the “disembarkation centers” but also with convincing countries to welcome back their own citizens when they are denied asylum in Europe. Tunesia typically complicates cooperation here, while also Morocco often simply refuses to meet with a Dutch Minister to discuss welcoming back its own nationals, even when they have committed crimes. Joint EU foreign policy action could be valuable here, certainly when using the EU’s financial leverage, but the EU’s “diplomatic service” is nowhere to be seen.
Unless the EU’s foreign service gets it act together, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the body is ultimately not needed for European governments to coordinate their foreign policy and that much of the value in cooperation could also be delivered by temporary joint arrangements, specially focused on a specific mission.
