Transatlantic Conversations: A Review of the Leuven Roundtable

By Rafael A. Rodríguez Diaz

This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018.

The Leuven Roundtable. l-r: Prof. Michael Smith, Mr. Alexandros Papaioannou, Mr. Richard Tibbels, Prof. Simon Duke

As part of the graduate-level seminar of EURO 596, which explores current issues in global and European Union (EU) affairs, and in the framework of the Jean Monnet ERASMUS+ and Leuven-Illinois project, “Conversations on Transatlanticism and Europe”, 3 students and I participated in a study abroad trip to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium during the Spring Break of 2018. As part of our agenda, on March 19, we attended a roundtable entitled: “The Transatlantic Community between Contestation and Cooperation”. This round table was divided into two parts: a) “Contestation, Cooperation and Global Threats in the Transatlantic Security Community”; and b) “Transatlantic Competition, Cooperation and Contestation in the Area of Trade and Sustainability. Here, for the purposes of this post, I would like to focus on some aspects from the first part in which the following people participated:

• Mr. Richard Tibbels, head of Division ‘United States and Canada Division’ from the European External Action Service; 
• Mr. Alexandros Papaioannou, from the Political Affairs and Security Policy Division, NATO; 
• Prof. Michael Smith from the University of Warwick and Guest Professor at KU Leuven; and 
• Professor Simon Duke from the European Institute for Public Administration in Maastricht.

If there was a common agreement among the guest speakers was the fact that the United States (US) has been a strategic partner for the EU, but the transatlantic relation has become more challenging to address under the current American administration. As Mr. Papaioannou and Mr. Duke mentioned, even though the discussion on international policies in different areas has always existed, what changed was the tone which has now become more troubled. Mr. Tibbels and Mr. Smith also pointed out that the significant number of senior officials yet to be appointed by the US government, create gaps of communication that complicate the conflicting-perceived tone even more. However, Mr. Duke also mentioned that, for instance, even though the debate regarding the mutual defense spending started decades ago, the Trump administration has achieved to create a greater awareness of the differences that the US and the EU administration hold, especially in security and defense. It was clear during the round table that the pattern according to which the US kept complaining while the EU seemed just to be listening without any further action has finished, and the EU is now waking up. Mr. Papaioannou reinforced this common view by affirming that Trump’s form of speech is influencing the whole debate within the EU. Mr. Tibbles also supported it by saying that now the EU needs to continue working on a further European Integration to face this new transatlantic tone in a positive way.

What became the most interesting piece of information for me out of this round table was Mr. Smith’s final intervention. He was certainly right to mention that the US and the EU need to pay attention to how to strengthen the fundamentals of their relations. He stated that this transatlantic order is suffering pressures from inside and outside. The focus cannot be only on the intern- and trans-governmental relationships but also on the transnational relations displayed through businesses and social and cultural movements. These areas have also been attached to strains that they may not have faced before. Brexit, for example, is and will present a new era for the four economic freedoms: goods, services, labor and capital of the EU. It is a moment of international competition in which special attention needs to be given both by the US and the EU to China and Russia, and the current peace agreements happening between North and South Korea.

One of my short and mid-term objectives, after receiving a Master of Arts in European Union Studies, includes observing how these two global actors will work to make sure the gaps on security and defense and more recently in trading do not become bigger. As agreed after the round table, it is indeed necessary that a recalibration of the transatlantic relations takes place, where the future of the fundamentals of these transatlantic relations can be set to face current and future tones.