The EU should impose sanctions on Gaddafi’s Libya

The EU spends €460 million a year in operational costs alone on its new foreign policy department, the External Action Service, headed up by Catherine Ashton. This body – created by the Lisbon Treaty – was Europe’s ‘great white hope’ for the global stage, finally allowing it to speak with one voice and therefore giving it leverage where it previously had none.
 
It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Caught between Cairo and Tripoli, the EU has received yet another reminder that its bureaucracies and institutions cannot magically replace 27 individual foreign policies, as EU leaders continue their bickering over what to do.
 
The EU’s response to the turbulence in Libya has been fragmented at best, and contradictory at worst. Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi – one of the few EU leaders with some clout in Libya – initially said that he didn’t wish to “disturb” Colonel Gaddafi since the situation was “evolving”.