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European Affairs

I do not want to get into the subject of the negotiations on Cyprus, which is in a strange position because it is already inside the European Union but has a divide within it. We need to recognise that there are now ongoing negotiations, brokered by Alexander Downer, the former Australian Foreign Minister. In the past, the European Union played a role and Lord David Hannay, former ambassador to the United Nations, was involved in the previous negotiations—the abortive Annan plan. There is clearly now some prospect of a breakthrough, but considerable issues of detail still need to be resolved. We need to give the necessary support, and we hope that a resolution of the Cyprus problem in the next year or two will facilitate the continuation of the aspiration for Turkish membership of the European Union. There are also other issues in respect of Turkish membership, and they need to be looked at. I turn to one final issue before I conclude: European Union expectations, and how we respond to them, in respect of the changes that have happened and will happen in the United States. President-elect Obama has been elected and there is growing recognition—all the commentators are talking about it—that in the next 20 or 30 years, the US focus will inevitably shift much more towards Asia and the Pacific. Europe will be expected to make a bigger contribution to resolving some of the issues on our periphery and in our neighbourhood. That will place demands on us, and rather than opposing the European security and defence policy, we should be working hard to strengthen it. We will need much better co-ordination—not just having naval operations intercepting pirates off the coast of Somalia, as was mentioned, not just trying to save lives in Africa, and not just doing the good work done by European Union forces in the Lebanon conflict or in the other conflicts in the region. In time, there will be greater demands on EU countries to make a more serious contribution in other areas. That will place big demands, particularly at a time of economic crisis, on the budgets and commitments of some European Union states.