Struggling Europe sets out to fix the world’s problems

The question is not so much what are they going to talk about as what are they not going to talk about? What can they afford to leave out, and what difference would it make?

The EU Foreign Affairs Council, which takes place today and Friday in Berlin chaired by Germany’s Heiko Mass, is the first “live” gathering of European foreign ministers since the end of the coronavirus lockdown. It follows a Zoom Council last Friday designed to set the agenda for the meeting and will itself prepare the way for the next “special” summit of EU leaders in Brussels on September 24-25.

With the world, and Europe, in uproar, it would take an organisational genius to work out which are the priorities, to be taken seriously and at length, and which issues can simply be dismissed with a paragraph, or even a sentence, in the communiqué that will be issued in advance of the inevitable news conference.

Consider the long list of issues at stake:

Mass protests, and state repression, in Belarus following this month’s disputed presidential election;

Mounting tensions in the eastern Mediterranean resulting from Turkey’s aggressive hunt for oil and gas in the Aegean;

Erdogan’s armed intervention in Syria, not, we are assured, an example of Turkey, as a Nato member, working hand in glove with Russia;

The potential disintegration of Lebanon in the wake of the massive explosion in Beirut that left its government exposed as both moribund and horribly corrupt;

Relations with Russia, made worse this month by the presumed poisoning of President Putin’s leading political opponent Alexei Navalny by agents of the state;

The upcoming presidential election in the US, hopefully bringing to an end the anti-European administration of Donald Trump and the restoration of America as the EU’s friend and partner;

The ongoing trade talks with the UK that seem destined to end either in No Deal or with a settlement cobbled together in the last seconds before midnight;

The situation in the Sahel in the wake of the military coup in Mali;

The fate of the Uighurs in China and the (unrelated) future of Huawei in Europe’s digital infrastructure;

Britain’s apparent – and entirely unheralded – decision to abandon tanks in favour of cyber warfare, throwing into question its posture as Europe’s leading military power;

The reality that the Commission will have to appoint a new head of its key trade directorate now that Ireland’s Phil Hogan has resigned over his attendance at a golf club dinner thronged with the country’s Great and Good in defiance of the Dublin government’s Covid regulations;

Oh, and climate change and mass migration and the global response to Covid-19. Quite a lineup!

On the fringes of the meeting, not strictly matters for foreign ministers to pronounce upon, will be the recent disclosure by the Commission in Brussels of how the first tranche of the EU’s €750 billion rescue and recovery plan will be divvied out. There is lots for Italy and Spain. Quite a lot, too, for Poland and Belgium, with Hungary’s share still to be announced. But nothing for France. Ministers from the Union’s traditional heartland may also feel the need to quiz their counterparts from Warsaw and Budapest on how their governments square a growing appetite for western financial aid with their continued refusal to accept asylum seekers and third world migrants.

A packed programme? You bet. But along with events, dear boy, come priorities. Europe can’t solve all of the world’s problems. It can’t even solve many of its own. So it is likely to come down to the skill of those who write up the order paper and draft the final communiqué. At that point, the buck will be passed up the line to the heads of government, presided over by Charles Michel, the Belgian president of the European Council, and, on this occasion, Germany’s Angela Merkel – overseeing Mount Doom until the end of the year – for whom the September summit will be one of a series of swan-songs in advance of her retirement.

This week’s jamboree will also be an opportunity for the EU High Representative Josep Borrell, a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, to finally stamp his authority on the Council. The Covid crisis has made it difficult for Borrell, aged 73, to do the usual rounds of the 27. He has also been embroiled in accusations of bullying and of cosying up to Beijing. He will be hoping that, with autumn just around the corner, his painstaking preparations for the Berlin meeting bear fruit.

So much for protocol. The reality is that the key interventions will be those of Heiko Mass, from Germany’s left-of centre SPD, known to take a tough line on Russia and Turkey, and his immensely experienced French opposite number, Jean-Yves Le Drian, a former Socialist, now an “independent,” who, in the manner of most of his predecessors, would wish Europe to take its emollient lead from the Quai d’Orsay.

But watch out, too, for anything that is said by the Polish minister Zbigniew Rau, once a supporter of Lech Walesa and now an ardent member of the ultra-conservative Law and Justice Party, who opposes anything that smacks of socialism, dismisses the claims of the LGBT lobby and believes firmly in Europe’s Christian identity. Rau is likely to deliver his message in tandem with Hungary’s Péter Zjijjártó, who favours closer relations with Russia and is on record as saying that the migration crisis represents “the greatest challenge that the EU has had to face since its foundation”.

Does the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, wish he was going to Berlin to join in the fun? Certainly not. Raab is a Brexiteer to his fingertips. But he would not be human if, as a keen boxing fan, he did not miss the opportunity to punch above his weight in the European arena. It is all very well to press Britain’s sovereign claims in the world, but going it alone is not always easy, or rewarding. Raab was in Jerusalem this week, talking with Israeli and Palestinian leaders as well as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, with whom, according to a Pompeo tweet, he discussed President Trump’s “vision of peace” for the Middle East.

That’s the stuff to feed to the troops… while we still have some.