For more than 30 years the EU has aspired to developing a common foreign policy. This was bound to be a slow process, for its member-states have had very different histories, and also have different and often competing external interests, writes Garret FitzGerald
However, EU member-states have gradually come closer together on many issues as they have been forced to address different external challenges over recent decades - for example, the persistent Middle East crisis, US intervention in Central America in the 1980s, the Yugoslav crises of the 1990s and various African crises in the 1990s, and the threat of international terrorism.
This convergence of member- states' approaches to foreign policy has not been widely noticed, simply because good news of that kind is not news, whereas when member-states disagree, as is bound to happen from time to time, that makes headlines.
Let me give several examples of the process of gradual policy convergence. When 32 years ago I became minister for foreign affairs, the Community, as our Union was then called, was deeply divided on the issue of the Middle East.
Six of what were then nine members of the EC saw the Palestinian issue as primarily a refugee crisis, failing to recognise that Israel would never find peace until the Palestinians, who had lost everything in the course of successive Arab-Israeli wars, were given space in which to establish a state of their own. At that time only France, Italy and Ireland recognised that reality.
Only in 1980, at a crucial foreign ministers' meeting in Venice, did these six countries finally come to share the analysis of the French, Italians and Irish. And, three years later, the Community also reached a common position on a second issue, making a statement critical of the US militarisation of Central America.
By contrast the Community notably failed to agree on an approach to the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and ended up having to depend on United States air power to end Serb attempts to expel the Albanians from Kosovo. But the humiliation, and indeed shame, of that debacle finally forced the European Union to develop a belated common policy on the Balkans.
More recently, fearful of US impatience with Iran's nuclear policy, the EU's largest three states have sought to defuse this new potential crisis by diplomatic measures, a policy that has secured the support of its EU partners. There have also been a number of peacekeeping initiatives in relation to Africa that have won support from all the states of the Union.
Thus the pressure of events, and also in some instances what have been seen by Europeans as worrying developments in US policy, have gradually brought into existence a range of common EU foreign policy positions.
Even the spectacular European failure to agree a stance on Iraq several years ago served to create great pressure in favour of a common approach to post-war problems of Iraq, in a move to improve a damaged US-Europe relationship, and in the hope of recovering some influence over what has been seen as worrying US unilateralism.
The outcome of President Bush's visit to Europe this week suggests that the reforging of a common European position on this issue has had at least some positive impact on the public policies of a United States which has been forced by events to recognise the inadequacies of unilateralism.
It is not surprising that in parallel with these multiple developments the EU has come to see a need to improve the structures through which it develops these common policies. In recent years we have seen the emergence of a foreign policy personality, Javier Solana, in parallel with the External Relations Commissioner.
The European constitution, which our electorate will be asked to ratify in the latter part of this year, makes provision for the merger of these two roles, by "double-hatting" one person to fulfil both functions. If this constitution is adopted, Europe will finally be able to speak with one clear voice in respect of those areas of policy on which it has a unanimously agreed position.
This will strengthen Europe in its difficult relationship with the United States, as well as elsewhere in the world.
On a visit to Washington in January 1975, at the start of the first of six Irish presidencies of the EC/EU, I had the task of initiating a tentative foreign policy co-ordination process between the European Community and the United States.
What I particularly recall from that meeting is that Henry Kissinger welcomed the fact that on issues on which Europe and the US then disagreed I made no bones about the differences between us. Indeed then and later he expressed his frustration at the fact that there had been too little straight talking in the course of earlier bilateral contacts with individual European states.
A fully structured European foreign policy, capable of engaging in a friendly but frank level of discussion with the US, can only be a good thing.
The "vice-president foreign minister" who is to be appointed under the new European constitution will be assisted by a European external action service, which will bring together elements of the European Commission's External Relations Directorate-General and of the Council Secretariat, and will be reinforced by diplomats seconded by the foreign ministries of member-states.
Outside the Union EU delegations that currently deal with such matters as trade and development co-operation will be restructured so as to enable them to handle foreign policy issues also.
The recent appointment to the EU Washington delegation of a senior European politician, John Bruton, with experience both of the European Council and also of the Presidium of the Convention that recently drew up the draft of the European constitution, clearly foreshadows the future development of this new kind of European diplomatic service.
Because of Ireland's exceptional relationship with the US Congress, not matched by most other European states, this appointment has already been reported to have secured for the EU greater access than formerly to parts of the US political system.
Irish critics of the gradual evolution, by unanimous accord, of common EU positions on aspects of foreign policy, now to be further developed by an EU external action service, might be challenged to say which of the common policies that have so far emerged they disagree with - and why. What I find striking is how closely the common policies that have developed over the years correspond to Irish aspirations and values.