Intergovernmental Relations: The EU vs. The World

Last November, Iran agreed to suspend its nuclear programs in exchange for beginning trade and political talks with the EU. This action was taken to prevent Tehran's referral to the UN Security Council, an action that could have swamped the burgeoning nation with trade restrictions, tariffs, and embargoes. But recently, Iran has insisted that it has "legitimate rights" to nuclear research and testing, as outlined by the laws of peaceful nuclear technology under international law.

As the EU Observer reports, the negotiations between the EU and Iran up to this point have been a paradigm for the kind of political relationships that will be necessary for safety and security in the nuclear era. A skeptical United States had wanted to refer Iran directly to the UN Security Council, but cooler heads prevailed, opening the door for negotiations that were to come to a conclusion in the upcoming weeks. On August 2, the BBC reported that the "Big 3" EU countries (Britain, France, and Germany) were prepared to make full proposals for economic, political, and nuclear cooperation within the week.

But on Monday, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi revealed that Iranian workers were preparing to remove the UN seals on boxes of equipment used for the conversion of elemental uranium into enriched uranium, a key step in the process of creating a nuclear warhead. Iranian officials insist that the enriched uranium is to be used for civilian and civil programs, and not for the creation of weapons - but US and EU officials are skeptical. Even with the previously sealed equipment, however, US intelligence reports reveal that it would be almost 10 years before Iran would be prepared to arm and launch a nuclear weapon.

The question to be addressed her is what role the EU needs to have in relationships with foreign countries. In this situation, one could ask whether or not the political views were those of a select few countries (the US, Britain, Germany, France, etc.) or whether they really were the political views of the EU at large. And who decides what the EU's political opinion should be? Even with appropriate representation and a congressional lawmaking system, it would be nearly impossible to represent all of Europe's diverse political viewpoints with a single blanket statement or action. One can peruse a variety of articles on this particular incident, and read quotes from representatives of all of the major involved countries - but nowhere present is a statement from an EU official.

Consider also a recent story involving Poland (an EU member) and Belarus (a non-member country). Essentially, the story boils down to the presence of 400,000 people of Polish descent present in Belarus, a country strongly allied with Russia, old-world values, and communism. Recent political developments involve the extraction of the Polish ambassador to Belarus, and picketing and riots near the Belarusian embassy in Warsaw. Tensions came to a head on the 28th of July, when Belarusian police raided the headquarters of a major Polish political party and detained several political figures.

Now Poland is calling for the EU to take action against Belarus in the form of economic sanctions, and move designed to protect the Polish ethnic minority in the largely soviety country. Three letters delivered to the office of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana have been thus far ineffective at producing the sanctions necessary - and the EU remains reluctant to act, indicating that they will keep an eye on the situation for now, but that action is unlikely before the next meeting of EU foreign ministers in September. Many member states have now banded together and support a process to expel Belarus from the system of preferential trade from which they currently benefit, just in time for presidential elections in 2006.

In a third, unrelated story, France has recently reopened formal political communications with Cuba, nearly two years after the EU officially closed their doors to the nation after more than 75 dissidents (including independent journalists) were sentenced to 28 years in prison. Cuba's position has been, ostensibly, "Finally, today, Europe's inevitable correction has come. It is clear that the so-called sanctions adopted by the European Union in 2003 were unjust and ineffective." The EU's position on the matter, as conferred by Portugal's ambassador to Cuba, "It is a success for France, but I would have preferred that the European Union keep a unified position."


So here we have three stories about a difference of opinion between a member country and the EU as an entity itself. How can these political differences of opinion be reconciled, especially when so many different political opinions exist?