European Institute

By Caroline Larsson, European Institute

The upcoming summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, November 28-29, will be pivotal for the future of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership, an initiative through which the EU has sought to engage with a number of former Soviet republics, who are not members of the EU. Action on the proposed EU association and trade agreements with Ukraine has become the touchstone.

Some two dozen members of the European Parliament (MEP)s were in Washington last week with one topic dominating their agenda: the ongoing revelations of mass U.S. government electronic surveillance of Europeans. With the National Security Agency (NSA) spy scandal continuing to grab headlines, the euro-parliamentarians had little difficulty attracting media attention. Moreover, the sharp embarrassment being felt by the US government had a further positive effect for them. While scheduling face-to-face meetings with top level U.S. officials can be a challenge, on this occasion, the parliamentarians secured numerous top level encounters. Most notably, German MEP Elmar Brok and British MEP Claude Moraes, two key figures in Parliament’s ongoing inquiry on mass government surveillance, met with General Keith Alexander, the Director of the NSA. They also had face time with Diane Feinstein, Chair of the Senate intelligence committee, who has been briefed extensively on the NSA’s activities, and with Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s top counter-terrorism policy advisor. Attendance at think tank seminars like the meeting at The European Institute, with MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht and FTC Commissioner Julie Brill, were oversubscribed.