EU rhetoric and reality

Like a typical politician, there tends to be a gaping chasm between what the European Union loudly proclaims itself to stand for and what it actually does.

Exhibit A: Gitmo

The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where roughly 250 detainees are held, has long been a symbol of what European publics consider U.S. lawlessness. But while European officials have criticized the United States and called for the center's closure, they have been unwilling to take concrete steps to make that easier.

Exhibit B: Global warming/climate change

European Union leaders were on the verge of presenting a dramatically weakened plan to reduce emissions at the end of their two-day meeting on Friday.

Leaders said the plan, which offers a swathe of concessions to polluting companies and countries, would not jeopardize their overall target of reducing planet-warming emissions by 20 percent by 2020.

“The suggestion that there has been a watering down of ambition is complete nonsense,” said José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch.

Environmental groups, however, said it was the end of European leadership on coping with climate change. “A flagship E.U. policy now has no pilot, a mutinous crew and numerous holes in its fuselage,” said Sanjeev Kumar of the environmental group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund.

Parts of the plan represent a significant retreat from plans drawn up in January by the European Commission to alter Europe’s pioneering Emissions Trading Scheme.

Europeans love to stand on the sidelines and point fingers at the U.S. and their diabolical leader President Bush (or, as it emerges from their throats, "Booosh") but when it comes to offering solutions they tend to be strangely absent. This is best understood as a chance to indulge in infantile anti-Americanism rather than an expression of genuine concern.

While the article about climate change is notable for its hypocrisy it is the one about the Guantanamo Bay detention facility that I find more instructive. Apparently the Europeans are now willing to take in some of the detainees from Guantanamo as part of a bid to help facilitate its closure. What's changed? Obama. This tells me that either the Europeans never truly viewed it as a serious problem in the first place or a desire to thwart Bush trumped their concerns -- in essence a foreign policy based on childishness.

It's this lack of seriousness on the part of so many on the other side of the Atlantic that explains why I am not terribly troubled by their opinions. When they start practicing what they preach, or condemn North Korea with the same vigor that they reserve for the United States, then maybe I'll start paying attention.