As a citizen of Luxembourg, a country that was liberated in the Second World War by the US Army, I can imagine no better place than West Point to speak to you today about a topic that has been dear to my heart for many years: the relations between the United States of America and Europe and their roles in shaping the future of the world.
And although I have come here today to speak to you about the future, I cannot do so without mentioning the great sacrifices that the American people suffered to liberate Europe in the last century. In Luxembourg alone, more than five thousand US soldiers, among them a West Point man, General George Patton, are buried at the US military cemetery. They are a constant reminder of what America did for my country in World War II. To paraphrase a sentence which I saw at the Korea War Memorial in Washington DC, "we shall always honor and remain grateful to those soldiers who came to liberate countries that they hardly knew and to fight for people they never got to know". I believe that one can only build the future if one understands past experiences.
And then there was 9/11. A terrible experience for America. A day that changed the world and will have an impact on all of us for many decades. On that awful day of September 2001, we were all Americans. As minister in charge of internal security I know of the many new challenges that lie ahead in the fight against terrorism and fundamentalism.
And finally, as a Harvard man and as a European, I would like to remind us in the context of transatlantic relations of the famous speech at Harvard University of June 1947 during which General George Marshall launched the idea of the Marshall Plan. "The remedy lies", Marshall said, " in restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole... The United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace."
I could add, of course, many other historic events that go through my head when I think of European-American relations, but my purpose today is to speak about the future of those relations. Because despite the fact that many Europeans continue to like to wear jeans, like to see Hollywood movies and listen to American music, it has become popular for quite a number of European politicians to surf on an anti-American wave. To stand up against American policy has been a successful political tactic in some European elections over the past few years. European media regularly make reference to more pro-american statements by European politicians as something rather unusual. Americans, on the other hand, do not always understand the challenges and goals of building a united Europe, turn to the problems of the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan, and do wonder why Europe should matter to them, now that the Soviet-communist threat has disappeared..
There have always been more difficult periods and disagreements in transatlantic relations, but as the world sees the emergence of new powers and faces new threats and challenges which are global in nature, we must have an in-depth reflection on what role the US and Europe should play, separately or together to help shaping the world’s future. Whereas some seem to favor a stand-alone strategy for Europe and the US, or even an friendly divorce of the transatlantic alliance, I personally argue for a stronger institutionalized cooperation between Europe and the United States. A cooperation that survives individual governments and that will make our countries stronger in building the future of the globe and in managing its numerous challenges.
The values and the role of America
"O beautiful for spacious skies,
for amber waives of grain,
for purple mountain majesties
above the fruited plain!"
Like many Americans, I love the song America the beautiful; it reflects so nicely your nature and history. But I also like in Americans their friendliness, their strong sense of solidarity, their healthy patriotism. I know no other country where the respect and unity around the national flag is so strong as in the US and each European visiting the United States is struck by the huge number of American flags in front of private houses.
All this reveals important values of the American people from which we certainly can learn. But America is also a historic symbol of freedom and fundamental rights. The 1787 Constitution of the United States, with its institutional checks and balances, and the first ten Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, have served as a model to many countries in the world.
Let us not forget that the French human rights declaration, the déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme et du citoyen of 1789, demonstrates forcefully how close we are on what has been and will remain our main task, as citizens and politicians: to protect and preserve the fundamental rights of mankind and democracy: the right to live, freedom of speech, free elections, rule of law, equal rights independent of race or creed, equal rights for men and women, justice, security, to name only a few.
America represents those values in many parts of the world. You only need to talk to the citizens of many central and Eastern European countries to get the true sense of what I am saying. Because America did not only enshrine those values in its Declaration of Independence or its Constitution, but also repeatedly sent its soldiers to many places around the globe to defend the values of freedom and democracy. This American sense of sacrifice for a great cause, which my country and others gratefully acknowledges, is something that is difficult to be found in any other nation around the world. As President Kennedy put it in his impressive Inaugural Address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, … in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty".
Americans and Europeans share the same values. This is no old-fashioned cliché. If we compare our way of life on both sides of the Atlantic to those of many other parts of the world, this becomes even more evident. As long as there are dictatorships around the world, as long as there are people who want to destroy our free societies and democracies, be they islamist fundamentalists or extreme right or extreme left political parties, the discussion about values, and the defence thereof remains necessary, remains modern.
The statue of liberty which proudly looks over New York was given to America by the French. Americans and Europeans must give the same statue to many other nations in the world, not separately, but together, bound by the same values.
The values of Europe and Europe’s future
The European Union of today is a unique community of values, based on the rule of law. Without the unification of Europe after the World War II, I am not sure whether we would have lived in peace and stability for more than sixty years now on the European continent. It needed permanent institutions and the definition of common goals - free movement of citizens, capital and goods - to ensure that negotiations would for ever replace the sounds of weapons in Europe. Yugoslavia in the 1990’s reminded us brutally that the threat of war did not disappear in Europe unless there are strong instruments to organize peace.
For many years - I remember well the papers I had to write on this issue during my studies - Europeans discussed whether they should first build a political union among themselves or first enlarge the European Union to new member States. Remember that the European Union was first created among six countries (the Benelux countries - Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg -, France, Germany and Italy) and was only later joined in different years by others. The end of the Cold War led to a quick answer to the dilemma.
The European Union represents values that had been refused to the people of those countries for many years. The European Union was the symbol of stability, democracy and prosperity for the new democracies of central Europe, NATO their security guarantee. We could not welcome the end of the communist era in Europe and not allow those countries to join the EU.
However, and this is something which is often underestimated in the US, a majority of citizens were, and still are, reluctant to the enlargement of the EU. This has to be seen against the background of the great economic discrepancies between most of the founding members of the EU and some of the new entrants. Those citizens believe that enlargement entails a higher risk of delocalisation of companies to those low wages countries, more immigration from those new member States and more criminality. Enlargement in my view was the right choice for reasons of freedom, stability and democracy. It also opens up new markets for the economies of Western Europe.
But, we need to take the concerns of the people seriously. We must make sure that there is fair economic competition within the European Union with minimum labor law standards applicable everywhere. We must strengthen the instruments of police cooperation to deal with networks of criminals. We must ensure that the external borders of the EU are controlled according to the best European practices. We must urgently adopt new decision making rules, because a Europe of twenty-seven countries cannot function like a community of six or even fifteen member States. I hope we can do so with the new treaty which was approved last week by the EU heads of state and government and which should enter into effect at the latest in 2009.
In order for the EU to function efficiently, we cannot enlarge the EU indefinitely. The EU is not the UN general assembly. It is an organization of countries that have decided, in certain areas, to take decisions that are legally binding on the members. For organizational and political reasons, the EU must have borders and must soon finish the enlargement debate, which blocks many other issues. I believe that the European Union should include all democracies on the European soil that wish to join, i.e., I am in favor of an identity between the geographical and political Europe. Asian, African or Middle East countries cannot join the European Union. For those countries, those that are neighbours and friends of the EU or those who do not want to join, we should establish strong tailor-made partnership agreements. The bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the EU can serve as useful example in this regard.
Europe is a success story, despite all the difficulties it faces. Within the European Union, all countries share the same fundamental rights, some for many centuries, others only much more recently. One of the great historic achievements is to have a guaranteed peace, stability and democracy in all countries of the European Union, with a reunited Germany and a reunited Europe. Quick and peaceful reforms must be encouraged in the Eastern neighbouring countries of the EU, in particular in the Western Balkans, the Ukraine and Belarus. They must become trusted partners and eventually members of the EU.
I also consider it an unprecedented achievement that in 2002, the people of twelve nations of Europe changed their currency from one day to another into the euro, which has since become a world currency, making Europe less vulnerable to external shocks.
The European Union is more than a free trade agreement or a single market in which persons, goods and capital can move freely without barriers. It has a political origin and purpose, i.e., to bring together the people of the European continent to ensure peace and prosperity. It is quite amazing how in this context the framers of the preamble of the Constitution of the United States and the authors of the treaty establishing the European Union found similar wording.
If Europe wants to keep its importance and be beneficial to the people of its various member states, it must further develop its common competences. I believe that in particular in the areas of justice and, what is called in this country, homeland security, we must become more European. I am a strong defender of having a closer cooperation in criminal matters, among others by drafting a European criminal code for serious crimes and by making our police cooperation more European. In particular, I believe that we should have more permanent exchange of information between European police forces, set up a truly European criminal police for serious crimes as well as a European border guard. I shall continue to argue forcefully for these controversial proposals as I am strongly convinced that the contribution of the EU to internal security is of vital value added to the national tasks of the European countries. I believe that Europe can learn a lot in this context from the federal structure of the United States.
The other important task for Europe is to speak and act with a common voice in international organizations and conferences as well as on international issues. A European foreign and defence policy is necessary for the rest of the world to understand what Europe wants. The voice of Europe will only be heard if it is a common voice. I know that this is not an easy task, as the countries of Europe were used, for many decades, to have individual foreign policies. This cannot be achieved from one day to another. We need a President of Europe and a secretary for foreign affairs to give a face to Europe, both vis-à-vis its citizens and the rest of the world. I hope that the countries of Europe will support the creation of those important functions by ratifying the new treaty on the EU.
And when you see the path Europe is going, a path that is not so different as to its goals from the one that the representatives of the various states of America were going two hundred years ago, one wonders of course on this side of the ocean what Europe has in mind with regard to the world and the United States.
Europe’s necessary partnership with the US
For some, Europe must be or become a counterweight to the United States. The defendants of this line of thought believe that Europe should restrain the power and leadership of the US. Others believe, often without saying it expressly, that Europe should develop and defend its own policies on international issues independent of the attitude of the United States, thus arguing for a friendly divorce or loosening of the transatlantic relationship. They believe that the interests of both Europe and America are too divergent to be continuously linked.
Based on what I have seen as a citizen and above all over the past ten years as cabinet member of Luxembourg in charge of issues such as justice, internal security, financial services and, for some time, defence, I believe that there is a strong case for the EU and the US for joining forces, now more than ever. I call for a new transatlantic partnership, because the challenges that lie ahead will be better faced by common positions of those two unique groups formed by the people of the US and of the EU, which, may I say it again, are bound by history and common values.
Facing the common challenges
Among the major global challenges that lie ahead are the fight against terrorism and religious fundamentalism, international organized crime, the reduction of poverty, hunger and aids, the elimination of weapons of mass destructions, the management of climate change and the organization of the global economy.
I believe that we are most powerful if Europe and the US join forces, and use our privileged historic position in many organizations and places in the world to make their voice heard. Of course, there may be one or the other issue where separate positions may lead to success. And the US may on some occasions find it more useful to look for ad hoc allies to defend some causes. But in the long run and for the serious long term challenges such as those I mentioned a moment ago, we, the US and EU need to consult, discuss, eliminate disagreements and cooperate.
Europe needs America, because the unique military and economic power of the US make it a key and indispensable player and when it comes to solve the most important international issues, including those political issues that require the threat or even the use of military force. Europe needs America, but America also needs Europe. Despite all of its might, America will not be able to bring sustainable solutions to the world problems without the cooperation of the EU. The historic role of Europe, its achievements and contacts around the world are such that the channels the EU can open and maintain are of prime importance to contribute to the solution of some of the most difficult issues facing humanity.
The EU and the US must achieve a common agenda on how to best deal with the world’s problems. Together, we must eradicate the causes of islamist terrorism by supporting moderate muslims, by stopping their sources of funding and their recruitement processes. Within the framework of our democratic societies based on the rule of law, we must find common solutions on how to deal with people who are threats to our nations and how to prevent them from committing terrorist acts.
Together we must act to stop the spread of aids in many parts of the world, together we must influence international decisions to halt global warming and to make international trade open and fair. The US and the EU have the know how and the resources to do so, and to influence many others, if they act together.
I do not want a Europe that has as its goal to become a new superpower that merely wants to stand up to the US. I do not want a Europe that automatically accepts US decisions. I want a very close partnership between the US and the EU that define together common positions on a broad range of world issues: how to deal with dictators and failed states, with poverty, with aids, with environmental issues, with security threats, and, of course the Middle East. Because we share the same historic roots, the same constitutional values and the same view of freedom of mankind, we must stand together. International global organizations, as useful as they are, cannot solve all of the conflicts because of the diversity of their membership. Let us not forget that there are still many dictatorships around the world and many threats that face our free nations. If we want to succeed, Europe and America must listen to each other, discuss and decide on common actions.
A permanent framework for the new atlantism
So, despite of the end of the Cold War that kept the US and the EU united, I believe that there is no reason for competition or divorce, but rather an urgent need to strengthen the transatlantic relationship. The regular meetings between the EU and the US are useful, but I believe that we need something more to deal on a regular and continuous basis with international issues. Whereas the work of organizations such as the OECD and NATO have been very successful to organize this dialogue in economic and military areas, we have no permanent platform to discuss all of the other issues. Moreover the membership of those organizations are broader.
It would therefore be most useful in my view to set up a permanent EU-US organization or secretariat which would prepare and structure our dialogue, suggest solutions, provide for efficient decision making mechanisms. In a democracy, leaders come and go, but organizations remain. With regard to NATO, let me stress that I am convinced that NATO remains an essential tool for discussing global security issues. In today’s world where security issues are complex, NATO should, in my view, evolve from a military defence organization to a transatlantic political organization in which all security issues of a global nature should be discussed. It should be able to suggest and implement security solutions that exceed the military domain, in particular in the areas of building democratic institutions based on the rule of law.
There is a lot to be done in the world. I believe that it is our duty to actively contribute to achieve justice, liberty, and security in the world. But we will fail if we do it on our own. Europe needs America and America needs Europe to promote our democratic values, to fight for the rule of law, for economic development and against those who dislike our open, free, modern societies. European nations must join their forces to make Europe’s voice heard in the world and to better ensure prosperity and security within the various countries of Europe. But outside Europe, we will achieve more if we act together with the United States of America. And America will be more efficient in achieving its goals if it acts in a structured partnership with Europe.
May I conclude with a paraphrase of a statement by President John F. Kennedy:
My fellow citizens of America, ask not what Europe will do for you;
My fellow citizens of Europe: ask not what America will do for you;
But what together we can do for the freedom of man.