New report reveals massive decline in EU power at the UN

The European Union's leverage to promote human rights values and its vision of a rules-based world order has dramatically declined over the last decade, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a European think tank.

After analysing over 10 years of UN voting statistics, a new report by the ECFR reveals that, since the late 1990s, the EU has lost the regular support of 41 former allies on human rights votes, joining the United States in the group of leading world powers whose influence through the UN is in decline.

In the later 1990s, EU positions on human rights were backed by over 70 per cent of votes cast at the UN General Assembly. Over the last two years, the level of support has fallen to about 50 per cent, the report says.

The trend in support for Chinese and Russian positions in the same votes has been almost the exact opposite, leaping from about 50 per cent 10 years ago to 74 per cent (China) and 76 per cent (Russia) in the last General Assembly session.

"This reflects not only their outspoken commitment to sovereignty but their diplomatic skill in playing the UN system," the report notes.

"This paradox has come to the fore in 2008 as the EU has tried to work through the UN on Burma and Zimbabwe, yet been unable to get Security Council resolutions for action.

"These defeats come on top of previous setbacks for the EU at the UN in cases from Kosovo to Darfur," the report's authors, Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner, point out.

"This is partially due to geopolitical shifts. But the EU has also been the architect of its own misfortune," the report says.

"Europe has lost ground because of a reluctance to use its leverage and a tendency to look inwards - with 1,000 coordination meetings in New York alone each year - rather than talk to others. It is also weakened by a failure to address flaws in its reputation as a leader on human rights and multilateralism," it says.

The EU's decline at the UN is apparent in three key fora: the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and the Security Council.

The ECFR was launched by 50 prominent Europeans in October 2007, including Marti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland; Giuliano Amato, former Prime Minister of Italy; Jean-Luc Dehaene, former Prime Minister of Belgium; Joschka Fischer, former German Foreign Minister; and former European Commissioner Emma Bonino.

Its goal is to provide strategic analysis on the European Union's foreign policy performance and to promote a more coherent and vigorous European foreign and security policy.