Brussels, 03/05/2013 (Agence Europe) - In a joint report - “Think global - Act European” - published in April 2013, 16 European think tanks and more than 40 experts call on the EU to equip itself with a more integrated external action strategy in the long term, and they put forward ten recommendations.
In their study, the 16 think tanks highlight the need to improve coherence between the internal and external policies of the EU, and they underline - among other things - that the benefits of the single market are limited due to the slow development of the external dimension of the EU's internal policies. They call for more active cooperation between the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) - for example, with the creation of joint task forces allowing their expertise, instruments and resources on specific issues to be shared. They want the European commissioner for enlargement and European neighbourhood policy to be made the deputy of the high representative for foreign affairs after 2014.
According to the think tanks, the EU should develop a defensive attitude towards the neighbourhood with the development of common interests. They want conditionality to be better controlled in order to strengthen its effectiveness. They also want the EU to engage more with world players, such as the United States and China, and to develop a cooperative and proactive engagement with Russia and Turkey.
The experts propose that the EU should attend to the fragmentation of its economic governance. Increasing the EU's economic performance abroad requires increasing the EU's voice in global macroeconomic and financial affairs, the think tanks say. They believe that the development of a complete strategic approach for sustainable growth and access to strategic resources is also needed.
Emphasis is put on migration, with support for legal migration, and on the need to go beyond a security-focused point of view on migration and the development of a global approach with other EU policies - with a broadening of the debate on social, economic and environmental issues.
The experts are also interested in the area of defence and military capacity, wanting the EU to conduct a review of its defence policy, and setting out the EU's geostrategic priorities, the threats for European security and the types of operational scenario that the European governments must prepare for. The European governments should see how they can maintain and develop the military capacity that can give them the agility and autonomy they need to respond to future challenges and crises, the think tanks add. (CG/transl.fl)