The Bled Strategic Forum special panel on Monday discussed the prospects for multilateralism and whether the EU still has a role to play, either as a global power or as a draw for aspiring members. The speakers argued there were grounds for optimism, despite lingering problems.
H.E. Mr Igor Crnadak, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, rejected the notion that the EU may be less attractive for aspiring member states, arguing that membership remained one of the strategic pillars of Bosnia’s foreign policy.
Indeed, he said that one of the few good things to have come out of the migration crisis is that it made people in the EU understand that for major problems, “you don’t just need the EU, you need Europe.”
“Enlargement is not only in the interest of the applicant countries but also of the EU. The European idea is not lost,” Mr Crnadak stressed.
Ms Reva Goujon, Vice President of Global Analysis at the US security analytics firm Stratfor, meanwhile analyzed the US trade and foreign policy. She said that after a long period that was rather hazy, the world was now shifting to “great-power competition” again.
The US is engaged in competition with China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. “For Europe and others caught in the middle, there will be a lot of consequences… The US is trying to rebalance and the tactics [US President Donald Trump] is using can be quite disruptive.”
Nevertheless, Ms Goujon said, Europe is still highly relevant, for example in the Middle East and for containing Russia, and the US wants Europe to hold together. “The last thing the US wants is Europe to succumb to its demons … It needs Europe as an ally.”
H.E. Mr Thomas Greminger, Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), made a case for continued multilateralism despite all the pressure the concept has faced in recent years.
He proposed that some things need to be done by multilateral institutions themselves. “We need to make it a business case, we need to tell ordinary people why multilateral approaches matter when it comes to solving global problems.”
According to Mr Greminger, one solution would be to take a cue from the populists, who have been using marketing very smartly, but neither should multilateral institutions “Shy away from looking at instruments and mechanisms developed in recent decades and see whether they are still efficient. They should be ready to evolve.
Mr Gremminger also pointed out that there was no cause to indulge in doom and gloom, because paradoxically, while multilateralism has been on the decline, there has never been more need for multilateralism.
He pointed to positive developments in Central Asia driven by multilateralism, arguing that it was important to see both sides of the coin.
