Letters to the Editor | 18 August 2007

EU vs US

Sir: Irwin Stelzer can’t have it both ways (‘Now we know: Brown is a European, not an Atlanticist’, 11 August). If Gordon Brown is going to have to give up his independent foreign policy when the EU reform treaty comes into force, so too will Nicolas Sarkozy. So neither a British nor a French special relationship with the US will count for much. The truth of course is that neither proud nation will give up its independent foreign policy.
What the reform treaty does ensure, however, is that there will in future be a more coherent EU foreign policy, which will remove some of the exasperation that some of the EU’s partners feel about present arrangements. And with Brown, Sarkozy and Merkel at the helm of their respective nations, getting on well together and with the US, there is the best chance for ages of a genuinely strong transatlantic relationship, which we all badly need to confront today’s global challenges.

Lord Jay of Ewelme
Vice-Chair, Business for New Europe, London EC2

Sir: Irwin Stelzer needs to understand that many of us in the UK would support a Prime Minister who recognises that our interests are more likely to coincide with those of our European neighbours (if we had listened to them, we would not be in the Iraq quagmire) than with the US. He cites Gordon Brown’s decision, taken arbitrarily and without parliamentary discussion, to allow the US to base its new missile system in North Yorkshire as an example of a position that might be inconsistent with EU policy under the new constitutional treaty. In that case, the sooner the treaty is ratified the better.

David Woodhead
Leatherhead, Surrey