EUROPE : With Transatlantic Ties Chafing, Allies Seek to Revive Relationship

By TYLER MARSHALL

July 1, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BRUSSELS —

It was a single paragraph buried deep in the conclusions of this week’s meeting of European leaders on the French Riviera, but it could hold the seeds for reviving the United States’ most enduring overseas relationship.

The brief reference gave the green light for Europe to join with the United States in forming a high-level working group to reshape and rebuild transatlantic ties, which had bound the United States with the democracies of Western Europe during the Cold War but have drifted aimlessly in the years since.

While European political leaders, alarmed at America’s turn inward, have floated a series of grand-sounding ideas in recent months to recapture U.S. interest, two important facts make the modest new commitment far more significant:

* Unlike the flurry of big ideas, the plan to rebuild ties already has America’s attention. Indeed, it is a U.S. idea that the Europeans signed on to in Cannes and thus carries the Clinton Administration’s backing.

* Creation of the working group moves the concern about transatlantic links beyond the arena of rhetoric and begins a process that could eventually reshape and redirect ties that for most of their history have been anchored by U.S. security guarantees for Europe.

“The military alliance remains just as critical, but the sort of binding of the alliance through a military relationship now has to be augmented and supplemented by something else,” said Stuart Eizenstat, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. “Even if we protest to the contrary, we will drift apart . . . and neither side wants that.”

“We see this six-month period and the development of a transatlantic agenda as developing this post-Cold War vision,” he said.

Spain, which takes over the rotating presidency of the EU today, has embraced the low-key approach, elevating it to a major priority of its tenure at the helm.

Senior Foreign Ministry officials in Madrid said they hope to launch the U.S.-European working group by mid-July so that it can develop what one envoy called “a framework for action” by December.

“This is going to be a bottom-up approach,” said Emilio Fernandez Castano, a Foreign Ministry official working on the project. “We’re looking for real results that bring new meaning and new benefits into the relationship.”

Eizenstat called it “a substantive, future-oriented agenda--not mere platitudes--in the economic, political and diplomatic arenas.”

The U.S. side is expected to be headed by Joan E. Spiro, undersecretary of state for business, economic and agricultural affairs, and Peter Tarnoff, undersecretary for political affairs. Representing the European side will be two officials: Carlos Westendorp, the secretary of state for European affairs in the Spanish Foreign Ministry, and a senior aide to EU Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan.

While both European and U.S. officials stressed the potential for practical results, Castano said the Europeans also want a new “Atlantic charter,” possibly in one to two years, that would signal the changed nature of the relationship.

“The U.S. shouldn’t be perceived only as a military power,” he said. “We share values, traditions and other interests. A new charter would symbolize these ties.”

Although primarily based on a security alliance for most of the post-World War II era, the transatlantic ties today constitute the world’s biggest single external trade and investment relationship.

When Secretary of State Warren Christopher first floated the idea of a new transatlantic agenda during a recent speech in Madrid, he noted that European investment in the United States accounts for more than 7 million American jobs and that U.S. private investment in Europe is roughly equivalent to the combined amount American companies have invested elsewhere in the world.

Despite this depth, transatlantic ties have gradually eroded in recent years over differences on Bosnia-Herzegovina and a series of economic disputes ranging from European attempts to reduce U.S. film imports to sharp differences in philosophy over how to open Japan’s huge domestic market.

EU officials, for example, backed Japan in its recent trade dispute with the United States over autos and auto parts, sharply criticizing Clinton Administration tactics as a threat to the newly established World Trade Organization.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Alliance Realigned

The United States and the European Union are trying to craft a post-Cold War alliance.

EU-U.S. TRADE

Year: 1989

Total in billions: $164

Year: 1992

Total in billions: $200

Year: 1994

Total in billions: $214

US. STRENGTH IN EUROPE

Year: 1989