Setting the table: More than half a century of US EU relations

Summary:

EPRS invites leading experts and commentators to share their thinking and insights on important topics of relevance to debate in the European institutions. In this paper, Bruce Stokes, visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and associate fellow at Chatham House, offers an overview of the development of U.S.-EU relations since 1957, with a strong emphasis on ties in the last 30-40 years, largely based on the author's interviews with former officials who lived that relationship. The past 65 years has seen the pace and depth of official transatlantic interaction increase as the powers of the European Union grew, something the United States belatedly and reluctantly came to recognise, as transatlantic economic integration deepened, and shared challenges – China, technological change, global warming, pandemics, and global economic disparities – became more important to governments on both sides of the Atlantic. The paper does not attempt a comprehensive chronology of U.S.-EU relations, but discusses several longstanding challenges that have preoccupied the relationship: differences in values between Europeans and Americans and the contrasting perceptions they have of each other and of the European Union, their respective roles in the world, and their positions on given issues at hand.

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