European Council on Foreign Relations Launched

Today, 50 Europeans are launching the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) to promote a more coherent and vigorous European foreign policy in support of Europe's common interests and shared values. Among the fifty founding members are former prime ministers, presidents, European commissioners, current and former parliamentarians and ministers, public intellectuals, and cultural figures from EU member states and candidate countries – including Martti Ahtisaari, Giuliano Amato, Emma Bonino, Jean-Luc Dehaene, Joschka Fischer, Timothy Garton Ash, Bronislaw Geremek, Mart Laar, Chris Patten, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, as well as music producer Brian Eno, architect Rem Koolhaas, and author Elif Shafak.

The founding members want to move the European Union out of an era of introspection, which deepened after the French and Dutch ‘no’ votes, and force it to face up to its global responsibilities. They have drawn up a Statement of Principles which calls on European heads of state and government to:

• Develop a more coherent and vigorous European foreign policy, in order to tackle an increasing number of global challenges, including climate change, world poverty, nuclear proliferation and the surge of violent extremism;
• Co-operate more effectively in multilateral organisations, such as the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, and WTO in order to increase the EU’s collective power;
• Stand by the EU commitment to the prospect of eventual membership for Turkey and Western Balkans countries, in order to encourage their continued political, economic and social development;
• Increase incentives – such as visa regimes and market access – for the EU’s immediate neighbours to draw them further into the EU’s sphere of influence;
• Make the EU’s aid and trade relations – including the €12bn of European Neighbourhood Policy and €22bn of aid to the third world under the Cotonou Agreement – more conditional on political reform in recipient countries;
• Use the full gamut of European power to back European values, including, if all else fails, a willingness to use military force to stop genocide or avert humanitarian catastrophes, on both the wider European continent and around the world.

Please visit ECFR’s website - www.ecfr.eu - to learn more about this initiative; add your signature to the ECFR Statement of Principles; and join a pan-European community of debate and activism in support of a globally engaged European Union.