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The European Union is under increasing pressure to develop a strong, strategic, political voice in the world. Its large and increasing size and role in the global economy only serves to underline the disparity with its weak political voice and influence. When 10 more countries join the Union in 2004, its population will be close to half a billion. But progress towards a genuine European foreign policy is slow and inadequate. Furthermore, the speed of progress is certainly not fast enough to allow the EU to rise adequately to the
multiple and urgent global challenges on the agenda.
At the Laeken Summit in 2001, the EU’s leaders set high ambitions for developing a new and strong role for the EU in the world. In their declaration, they asked rhetorically, “does Europe not, now that it is finally unified, have a leading role to play in a new world order, that of a power able both to play a stabilising role worldwide and to point the way ahead for many countries and peoples?” They went on to establish a Convention on the Future of Europe and tasked it with producing political and institutional structures and changes to
meet three man challenges: to increase democracy, to manage the politics of the enlarged EU, and to enable the EU to become a stabilizing power and a model to others in the world. But while the Convention will produce a draft constitutional treaty in June 2003, a final new treaty is unlikely to be implemented until 2006.
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