The awakening, when it came, was sudden and rude. Just two months after the Lisbon Treaty granted the European Parliament new powers to veto international treaties, policymakers in Washington got a jolt when, on 11 February 2010, MEPs tore up a treaty that the US viewed as vital to its national security, the EU-US SWIFT agreement. Despite having advance warning that Parliament was furious at having been excluded from the negotiations on the accord, the US administration was caught off guard and its last-minute, high-level lobbying of Brussels effectively came too late. The agreement had to be renegotiated, with MEPs signing off on a new version in July. By this time Washington had become acutely aware of the new powers that Parliament had attained under Lisbon.

Thus when Jerzy Buzek, president of the Parliament, visited Washington in April 2010, the red carpet was rolled out to him. Buzek held a series of high-profile, high-level meetings, including with US Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, although he did not meet President Barack Obama. Looking to the future, the Parliament’s interest in protecting data privacy continues to make the US nervous. For example, Washington is fearful of a potential unravelling of the 2007 EU-US Passenger Name Record (PNR) agreement that requires airlines to transmit passengers’ personal data to the US authorities, which Parliament still needs to ratify. US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano may have zero appetite to reopen this accord, but if MEPs vote it down she will have no choice in the matter. Looking a little further over the horizon, Parliament will have a binding say on the overarching EU-US accord being negotiated on common data protection principles, which is supposed to facilitate greater communication of personal data between US and EU law enforcement authorities.

OBAMA BACKS LISBON CHANGES

The enthusiasm with which the Obama administration has greeted the institutional changes the Lisbon Treaty has brought about, in particular the further concentration of powers in Brussels, has been quite striking. The US president first met the new EU Council President, Herman Van Rompuy, at a summit on nuclear security in April, while Secretary Clinton has had several meetings with EU High Representative Catherine Ashton. But perhaps more telling than these meetings was one that did not take place at all. In January, the White House made clear that Obama would not be accepting an invitation from Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero to attend an EU-US summit in Madrid late that spring, which he was planning to host as a highlight of his country’s rotating EU Presidency. Obama’s refusal to attend was a major blow for the prestige on the global stage of the rotating EU Presidency. It remains unclear precisely what the Presidency’s representational role on EU foreign policy is. The Spanish Presidency’s successor, Belgium, has kept a low profile on the international scene, anxious not to steal the thunder of its Belgian compatriot, Van Rompuy.

The Lisbon Treaty has led to some significant reshuffling among the European diplomatic corps in Washington. No longer does the rotating EU Presidency chair, as it used to, coordinate meetings among the EU27’s diplomats, a task that is now fulfilled by the EU Delegation. The name ‘EU Delegation’ itself only came into official existence with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, on 1 December 2009, the office having previously been called the European Commission Delegation. The appointment of a new ambassador to the US to replace outgoing Ambassador John Bruton, who departed in October 2009, turned out to be an interesting and controversial milestone. In February 2010, Commission President José Manuel Barroso successfully manoeuvred his former cabinet head, Joao Vale de Almeida, into the job, much to the annoyance of some EU member states, which would have preferred a less Commission-based figure. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt even went on record as saying that the ambassadorship had been ‘downgraded’ by being given to a bureaucrat instead of a politician. Almeida, who took up his duties in August, heads up a somewhat jittery delegation in Washington. Officials are wondering precisely how the delegation’s makeup will change to comply with Lisbon’s requirements that EU member state diplomats and Council officials be added to their ranks to form the new EU External Action Service.

NEW EP OFFICE

Meanwhile, the EU Delegation in Washington is now working alongside nine officials from the Parliament, the EP having set up its own office in DC in January 2010 – the first Parliament office in a non-EU country. Although this development was not a direct consequence of Lisbon, the treaty provided the political impetus that spurred the MEPs to establish it. Parliament’s office is physically housed inside the EU Delegation, yet it does not come under the authority of Almeida, the head of that delegation, but instead reports to Parliament Secretary-General Klaus Welle. It will be interesting to see how relations develop between the EP office and the EU Delegation in the months ahead. On some issues – for example climate policy – the two have broadly similar positions. However, on others, notably data privacy and civil liberties, there are considerable divergences. After all, it was the Commission and Council that jointly negotiated the SWIFT agreement with the US only to have Parliament subsequently reject it. From the US perspective, if anyone in Washington harboured notions that Lisbon would remove all ambiguity about who speaks for Europe and what Europe thinks, they are likely to be disappointed.