MASTER
 
 
 
  NEWS
 
The transatlantic relationships
The theme of the relationships between European Union and United States of America is one of the most important themes concerning the international presence of the European union on the world scene. There is a first long phase (about 40 years) of these relationships, the phase of the cold war, the phase in which the European union doesn't have a proper foreign politics. There are two remarkable elements: first of all, really important also on the political-psychological plan, the United States of America has always been strong supporters of the community integration, starting from the beginning of the first years '50 to our days. The second matter, that already is outlinde since those times, it is that together with this support exist however some physiological reasons for dissent. The United States is a big world economic power: if the European community devoleps as great European unique market, it is enough imaginable that contrasts can rise by one side and the other. I was witness of this situation when I was in Bruxelles, in 1989, as Vice-president of the European Committee. But everything changes, evidently, with the great turn of the world political situation and the European political situation: 1989-1990. Fall of the wall in Berlin, German unification and, in 1991, even the end of the Soviet empire, of the Socialist Union of the Republics Soviet. And it's clear that these facts implicate the necessity of a more shared and busy elaboration of the relationships between United States and European Union. I consider a manifesto the discourse that James Baker III, Secretary of State in the George Bush senior administration, did in Berlin in the month of December of 1989. He spoke of new Europe and of a new atlantism as the most important pillars of the architecture of a new international order. I would like to remember that from this discourse is born the "transatlantic Declaration", a fundamental text of 1990. On one side the United States, from the other the European union, decides substantially to give an extremely precise and important calendar of bilateral relationships. Even the two annual meetings with the maximum vertexes of the two parts, year for year. But there is then a whole series of convergent actions in a quantity of fields. In this picture are evidently born some new responsibilities for the European union, a politics foreign and safety commune is born, a politics of common defense is born, the relationships intensify with the Nato, there are common interventions of the two parts, in the western Balkans, we think about Bosnia Erzegovina and then we think about the Kosovo. But then the history of the bilateral relationships knows a crisis. And it's the 2003 crisis, on the occasion of the American intervention in Iraq. On one side there are the favorable countries, partecipating to this operation, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, the candidate countries; on the other side, beginning from France and Germany, there are the contrary countries. I wouldhowever to remember that despite this serious crisis, the picture doesn't break, it remains, for example, still firm to the conscience the indispensability of the Nato as only safety scheme collective for United States of America and for European Union. We have reached 2005, difficulties are grown in Iraq, certainly not an easy and quickly matter to resolve, some negative prejudices are disappears, and at European level this is probably a turning point. The full recover of a shared solidarity between United States of America and European Union is condition for the growth of the same European Union, but above all it's a condition for the safety and the peace in the world.
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