Transatlantic Relations: A Year Later

Meunier, Sophie and Keeler, John T. S. and Guiraudon, Virginie. (2004) Transatlantic Relations: A Year Later. [Review Essay]

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Abstract

[Introduction by Virginie Guiraudon, EUSA Forum Editor]. After the bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004, presented in the press as "Europe's September 11th," U.S. and EU leaders will intensify cooperation in the area of Justice and Home Affairs. Yet, in other policy sectors, the EU and the U.S. publicly voice their differences. The declarations of the next head of government, the Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, regarding Spanish troops in Iraq suggest that the "pro-Bush" coalition in the EU is about to change. A year after the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the intra-EU and transatlantic tensions that resulted from the build-up to the war, it is time to assess the state of EU-U.S. relations. Two of the contributions to this Forum on transatlantic relations are adapted from talks delivered by board members John Keeler and Sophie Meunier at the workshop that EUSA and Sciences Po organized in Paris in November 2003. They respectively focus on defense and trade issues. They make us understand that the lines of cleavage are not the ones that receive the most media and popular attention and that we should rethink the way we rank the intensity of disputes and explain them. We conclude with an area where cooperation is both new and successful: border controls.

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