Blair urges Europe to work with US
Tony Blair has called for European leaders to share a “common agenda” with the United States on global issues such as terrorism and poverty.
In a joint article for the Nepszabadsag newspaper with Hungarian counterpart, Ferenc Gyurcsany, the leaders wrote: “Any idea that we can build a coherent international agenda on a division between Europe and the US is simply wrong.”
The Prime Minister, who visited the Hungarian capital of Budapest on Wednesday for a conference on how to rebuild centre-left politics in Europe and beyond, said it was misguided to view the US as a “rival” which the bloc had to do battle with economically.
Mr Blair and the newly-elected Hungarian prime minister urged European leaders to treat non-European countries such as America as “equal partners”.
“We need the two of them working together. Now that requires both to reach out one to the other so that we can develop that common agenda.”
And they called on western-European nations to wholeheartedly embrace the ten new member states, recruited from former communist countries, which joined the bloc on May 1st.
The leaders said western-European states ought to reject any idea of “inner or outer cores of Europe”.
“It’s up to the old members to demonstrate to the new that the EU now also belongs to them. They must show the newcomers they are welcome.
“The point of enlargement is unity not the creation of new divisions in place of those which we have erased. Together we are all founding members of a new Europe. Our future should be as one Europe where all are equal partners together.”
The leaders said Europe was “a union of nations”, rather than a “United States of Europe”.
Chair of the Policy Network conference, Peter Mandelson, said: “America has learnt from the errors of the war in Iraq. America now understands that it needs allies: not just coalitions of the willing that will support the US in its own policy decisions, but a wider international community that wants its voice to be heard and recognised.”
