Merkel-Bush EU summit to strive for harmony

By Laszlo Trankovits Apr 28, 2007, 12:21 GMT

Washington - The EU-US summit on Monday has been pre- programmed for success.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as current European Union president, and US President George W Bush meet Monday in Washington, the agenda will include a new agreement on transatlantic economic cooperation, and the issues of air transport, climate change and energy conservation.

The message the two leaders hope to project is that the United States and EU have pulled closer together.

The message is not totally off-track in the eyes of politicians and experts in Washington. A report from the government-funded Congressional Research Service found recently that high tensions in foreign relations and economic issues have given way to a more cooperative spirit and a 'renewed' sense of partnership in tackling global problems.

'We're working today with the EU on the full range of global challenges,' said Judy Ansley, director for European affairs at the US National Security Council, earlier this week.

But the positive image is not perfect. On the one hand, aspirations for closer economic cooperation, such as the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) to be set up during Monday's summit, conceal the impasse in the Doha round of global trade discussions, in which Brazil, China and India are insisting that Europe and the US stop subsidizing their farmers.

Despite continuing pledges for free trade in a globalizing world, the outlook for resolution is not particularly good, according to US experts like professor Stephen Szabo of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

On the issue of global warming, there are signs of rapprochement between the Old and New World. But despite a dawning change of heart for Bush, who has recognized that global warming must be taken seriously, the White House is not prepared to push for legal limits on carbon-dioxide emissions blamed for rising temperatures. Bush rejects rules like those enacted in Europe and the rest of the world community that has joined the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

Bush fears that drastic limits on emissions will dampen economic growth and job creation, although he and the US Congress face increasing pressure from investors to adopt uniform rules so US industry can start tackling the issue. Right now, industry must deal with a hodge-podge of regulations put into place by a growing number of individual US states impatient with Bush's stance.

Bush insists the growing industrial powerhouses of India and China must also adopt standards before the US does, to keep the playing field level. In addition, C02 emissions in the EU have increased faster than in the US between 2000 and 2004 despite strict EU rules - providing more fodder for Bushs' argument that US companies have voluntarily changed and don't need federal laws.

The really tough themes in transatlantic relations likely will be given short shrift by Bush and Merkel. The burning international issues of the day - Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and the Middle East - are in a status quo that does not currently require urgent action in the eyes of many European diplomats.

Bush, at a low point in his presidency over the chaos in Iraq and increasing domestic disapproval, has turned down the volume on his ideological proclamations of creating a new world order by bringing democracy to the Islamic world.

Bush is searching for a way out of the Iraq disaster and a way into a more positive image of his presidency in the history books, and hopes to use his final 20 months in the White House to do so, Szabo said in an interview.

With the Democrats in the majority in Congress, Bush has little room to manoeuvre on domestic issues - or even on foreign issues, as this week's vote to pull US troops out of Iraq by next year showed.

That's why transatlantic harmony is especially important to Bush. In fact, Szabo credits Merkel with convincing Bush to tone down his stridency on the US missile defence system in Eastern Europe and instead negotiate on the volatile issue that bubbled up again this week with harsh Russian resistance.

On the face of it, the situation promises a particularly conflict- free US-EU summit, so much so that Bush will even likely swallow his anger over Merkel's criticism of the US prison in Guantanamo.