EU/US: John Bruton has fences to mend in EU/US relations when he takes up his post as EU ambassador to Washington today. Conor O'Clery assesses the challenge.
Today, in Washington, former Taoiseach John Bruton will present his credentials as EU ambassador to US President George Bush and will officially become the highest-profile European envoy in America since Brussels first set up shop here half a century ago.
His task as head of the European Commission's delegation is specifically to raise the profile of the European Union in the United States at a time of transatlantic tension.
When nominated in September, the commission expressed the hope that Mr Bruton's appointment would "lead to a further strengthening of EU/US ties and to deeper mutual understanding in this indispensable partnership".
His appointment revives an occasional practice of sending a former politician to Washington rather than a career diplomat and it is designed to give the EU more clout on Capitol Hill.
Mr Bruton is not the first former prime minister to get the job: that was Jens Otto Krag, of Denmark, who headed the EU's Washington delegation from 1974 to 1977. In the early 1990s the post was held by Andreas van Agt, a former prime minister of the Netherlands. But the former Taoiseach should have easier access than any predecessor, especially on Capitol Hill, where several important members of Congress on both sides have maintained close relations with Irish politicans.
A bureaucratic appointee would not have as much impact in a town where access is power and where a dinner party by a former prime minister should register higher on the social scale that one given by a commission official. As Taoiseach from 1994 to 1997, Mr Bruton made several visits to Washington for high-level meetings, and many of his Congressional contacts are still around.
The former Fine Gael leader will head one of the European Commission's largest missions, with a staff of 80 people. Just as in 1954, when the office was first established and Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, Republicans control both Houses of Congress and the White House. But relations between the US and Europe - and between the French and the Americans - were much better 50 years ago than now.
Frenchman Jean Monnet, the first president of the fledgling European experiment then known as the European Coal and Steel Community, had been one of President Roosevelt's most trusted advisers during the second World War and was unusually well connected in Washington.
The first envoy he sent to the US was Leonard Tennyson, a onetime journalist, who had to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department but who benefited from the warm relationship at the time between the German/French-dominated body and the United States. Business leaders and trade unions of the day backed the first big trade liberalisation effort, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which was designed to lower tariffs and expand trade with a European common market.
But tensions developed as global trade expanded. The first big transatlantic trade dispute came in the 1960s and was known as the "chicken war". Arkansas chicken farmers tried to block the importation of European chickens with the support of the powerful Senator J. William Fulbright, who threatened to cut US troops to NATO. The early 1980s tenure of Sir Roy Denham as EU ambassador was marked by prickly trade disputes on issues ranging from pasta to steel.
Relations became more complicated in the post-Cold War era, when expanding trade and investment ties between Europe and the US were characterised by several high-profile disputes. The last four years have seen the most serious tensions in the relationship, mainly over Iraq, but also again over trade, and over climate change, genetically-modified crops and US rejection of the International Criminal Court.
John Bruton comes to Washington at a time when these have been exacerbated by European anger at the paralysis of US Middle East policy and America's weak dollar policy. The wounds from the split over Iraq remain raw. In a recent interview with the European Voice newspaper in Brussels, Mr Bruton's predecessor, Gunter Burghardt, of Germany, harshly criticised the "Old Europe" slur of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying that no one wanted to hear that kind of language again. He also hit out at the missionary zeal of the neo-conservatives in the administration, whom he said believed their agenda was "blessed by divine providence". The most important bilateral relationship in the world has, however, been enhanced by the EU's security strategy, adopted in December 2003, by its enlargement to 25 member-states in May 2004 and by ever-increasing volumes of transatlantic trade.
Mr Bruton clearly has some fences to mend, but there are signs that the Bush administration wants to fix them up as well. Mr Bush will travel to Europe after his inauguration with that in mind. This augurs well for Mr Bruton's first few months at least.