THE NEW ADMINISTRATION NEEDS TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE IN ADVANCING U.S. INTERESTS IN EUROPE

The relationship between the EU and President-elect Trump got off to an inauspicious start, after the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker on 11 November 2016 during a conference in Luxembourg in front of students fired a volley of criticism across the Atlantic saying  "We will need to teach the President-elect what Europe is and how it works,” “I think we will waste two years before Mr. Trump tours the world he does not know."

Recently President-elect Trump gave an interview to Michael (The Times) and Kai Diekmann (Bild) in which he talked about NATO, the EU and Germany based on undeniable facts. Immediately, French President François Hollande declared that ‘Europe has no need for outside advice to tell it what to do and that it was inappropriate for a President-elect of the United States to be stepping into the politics of other countries (re: Germany) in a quite direct manner’

Yesterday, the French LCI TV chain devoted an entire broadcast entitled ‘Europe: Trump Attaque’ supporting the idea that President elect Trump is meddling in European affairs.

Nothing that President-elect Trump said be it about NATO, the EU or Germany should be construed as an attack but rather as his personal observations of what is taking place in Europe. President-elect Trump’s statements corroborate with what many in Europe are saying themselves.

At the same time, it is my view that the New Administration needs to engage the EU more effectively:

The United States interacts with the European Union across an extremely broad spectrum of issues, from revising the transatlantic security and defense architecture to focusing the U.S. business community on the global reach of EU standards. Virtually every federal department or agency already sees its work affected by what the European Union does; this influence is not likely to diminish in the future. Effective interaction requires a greater degree of interagency coordination than has been the case. It also requires more flexibility to navigate through the complex EU environment, where most issues are intertwined and arrangements for sharing sovereignty are fluid.

Effectively advancing U.S. interests also requires closer cooperation and teamwork between the U.S. mission to the EU in Brussels and the embassies in member state capitals. All these changes, in turn, require more senior-level attention to EU issues.

Recommendation 1: The National Security Council should create a senior-level position responsible for all aspects of EU policy, political and economic. This position should be separate from the one dealing with NATO. In defense and security, trade, regulatory and counter-terrorism policy, there is a clear need for greater interagency coordination and/or deeper engagement of the White House to steer the interagency process on EU issues. That can best be accomplished by creating a senior slot at the National Security Council (NSC) to handle EU affairs. The NSC is the ideal place to pull in expertise from various agencies to address a cross-cutting issue, which EU issues often are.

Recommendation 2: The State Department and other federal agencies should create positions, at the Assistant Secretary level or above, to manage EU policy. These senior officials should not be in charge of “coordinating policy” but should have real authority.

Recommendation 3: EU expertise must also be developed below the senior-most levels, whether in agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or in bureaus within Departments. At present, no federal agency has a single individual overseeing U.S.-EU relations. Instead, senior officials engage piecemeal, according to the specific issue in question.  Primary responsibility at the State Department resides with the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs who is responsible for NATO, the EU, and a portion of the offices for countries that belong to the EU. The remaining country offices fall under other deputy assistant secretaries.

Recommendation 4: The State Department should establish a new Under Secretary position for dealing with the EU, and combine that function with the post of Ambassador to the EU in Brussels.

Recommendation 5: To support this senior-level official, the State Department should establish a Bureau for European Union Affairs. This bureau would share authority with a Bureau for European Bilateral and NATO Affairs.

Recommendation 6: The Under Secretary for EU Affairs/U.S. ambassador to the EU should have authority over other European posts where EU policy is concerned, and the role of the U.S. mission to the EU should be enhanced. Additionally, the Under Secretary should engage the ambassadors and embassies in national capitals much more intensively than is now the case.  Today, those ambassadors are well aware that key policy decisions are made in Brussels, rather than in the capitals to which they are accredited. In a sense, they believe they have responsibility and authority for managing important issues that in reality they lack.

Recommendation 7: Officials in the relevant U.S. government agencies should be encouraged to develop expertise on the EU. Raising the profile of EU issues should also help to remedy current shortcomings in U.S. government expertise. The foreign affairs agencies that deal extensively with the EU need to develop a cadre of experts who understand its institutional and political intricacies. This is a long-term goal, but an essential one. The ambassadors to European posts, who are primarily political appointees, also need such expertise . Without an EU- related background, it takes much longer to get up to speed, and embassies lose the benefit of their most valuable asset during that time.

Recommendation 8: Officials at the National Security Council, the State Department and elsewhere should incorporate systematic long-term planning into their formulation of EU policy. If senior officials focus on the EU, they will of necessity pay more attention to its long term trends, as they will be more conscious of the EU’s elaborate, multiyear decision making and the potential for this decision-making to reinforce or constrain future U.S. policy choices.

Recommendation 9: The National Security Council, State Department and other agencies should develop a public diplomacy strategy tailored to the EU environment. The new Bureau of EU Affairs should have its own public diplomacy offi ce to develop strategies for the EU as a whole, and USEU should become a regional public diplomacy center. The priority should be public outreach to explain U.S. motives and actions, particularly in the Middle East and the areas affecting counter-terrorism policy. While recognizing that European perceptions are unlikely to improve soon, this initiative should target those audiences that are willing to listen and important to engage. It should also ensure that public diplomacy initiatives are duplicated by all EU missions, and explore exchange programs with such key groups as national officials specializing in EU affairs.