Yours sincerely, the European Union

The EU, like most international organisations, suffers from two endemic flaws. First because it was founded on perfect principles in an imperfect world and second, it is powerless to make true even a small part of these principles without the political will of its member states.

There is one area in which the flaws are on permanent and painful view: the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). It is safe to say that the EU as an entity is sincere in its desire to project itself into crisis situations across the globe, for both humanitarian and pure security and defence reasons. And that the individual member states are quite sincere on such projection, for the same reasons. Due to this sincerity both the EU and the member states make strong and passionate statements about crises around the world and their intention of resolving them - with money, advice, troops and any other means. But then reality intervenes and the sincerity melts away, leaving the words hanging meaningless in the face of unfolding crises.

As ever, the awful images of Darfur come to the fore in this context. Unfortunately, these are not merely images but reality. An estimated 450,000 people are dead, more than two million displaced and thousands of women have been raped and abused. There is something deeply dispiriting in writing those statistics, not only because they are horrific, but because they have been written - on this page - so many times before and the only thing to change over time is the numbers: more dead, displaced and raped. This has not been met by a commensurate increase in aid to those in need and the political pressure on the Sudanese government has been half-hearted, even when it evicted the UN representative to the region and even when it refused to accept a UN force in the place of the ineffective African Union force.

Within this half-hearted response, the EU has played but a minor role. Not a single presidency statement since the last two developments listed occurred in the past few weeks. Instead, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken the lead in making strongly condemnatory statements and Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, has raised the issue in the seemingly endless rounds of talks he undertakes around the world.

While the EU remains the largest financial donor to the region, no significant assistance in any other way has been offered. EU aid workers are a rare species at the best of times and these are not such times, while not a single EU soldier has been dispatched to the troubled region. Darfur will have to make do with sincerity from the EU, it seems.

Bosnia may also be about to receive a dose of sincerity, with Germany and the UK apparently intending to withdraw their troops from the EU force based there. Both are suffering from overstretch - or rather an overhaul, in the case of Germany, which is in the process of redirecting its armed forces towards military activities for the first time since the Bundeswehr was founded - and Bosnia has slipped in priority. The fact that the situation there is not yet politically viable or that nationalists that started the war there 15 years ago were just elected into office seems to matter little. For the purposes of sincerity the troops are needed elsewhere. And if the situation deteriorates in the Balkans the EU will undoubtedly provide perfectly principled statements on the matter - as will its member states. They will undoubtedly be of great use to those outside the EU, who live in an imperfect world. Perhaps they can use the hot air that surrounds them to warm their hands.

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

The EU, like most international organisations, suffers from two endemic flaws. First because it was founded on perfect principles in an imperfect world and second, it is powerless to make true even a small part of these principles without the political will of its member states.

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