Towards a post-American Europe: A Power Audit of EU-US Relations

Europe has the US president it wished for, but does Barack Obama have the strong transatlantic partner he wants? As European Council on Foreign Relations analyst Nick Witney and Jeremy Shapiro from the Brookings Institution warn in their report, ‘Towards a post-American Europe: A Power Audit of EU-US Relations', published by ECFR, national governments in the EU must shake off illusions about the transatlantic relationship if they want to avoid irrelevance on the global stage.

With EU leaders heading to Washington for their transatlantic summit on 3 November 2009, Shapiro and Witney caution EU member states: an unsentimental President Obama has already lost patience with a Europe lacking coherence and purpose. In a 'post-American' world, the United States knows it needs effective partners. If Europe cannot step up, Shapiro and Witney belive the US will look for other privileged partners to do business with. Yet the report reveals that a large majority of EU member states still believe they enjoy a ‘special relationship' with the US and compete for access and favour as if the transatlantic relationship remained the dominant foreign policy paradigm in Washington.

• Primary Source

ECFR: Towards a Post-American Europe: A Power Audit of EU-US Relations, 2009 http://ecfr.eu/page/-/documents/towards-a-post-american-europe.pdf

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