The CIIS just released a very audacious proposal in favour of having US top officials participating in the Convention on the Future of Europe.

It could be a very efficient way indeed to rebuild EU/US relations and prevent further Transatlantic drift ... provide it would be a two-way process. Otherwise not only does it stand no chance to be accepted, but pushed forward as such it would precisely increase the drift between the two continents as Europeans will see it as another imbalanced US approach of EU/US relations. Pushed forward this way it could only make Europeans think that the drift is rooted in the whole of US elite's vision and not only into G.W. Bush administration.

Therefore it has to be balanced. But how could it be?

As far as I know, the US do not envisage in a near future any updating of their 200 years old constitution, rooted into European ideas of the XVIIIth century. So what solution could be found on the US side to allow European top officials to join US essentiel law making process?

Maybe a European presence into the US Senate? Or a European judge into the US Supreme Court?

One or maybe both of these ideas could really be a balancing, and therefore politically meaningfull act, to rebuild EU/US relations for the longer term.

Tough to implement, some may say. Definitely! But far more realistic than the one-sided proposal coming from CISS.

The Iraq crisis catalysed major changes in EU/US relations. As TIES (Transatlantic Information Exchange System) has been warning since 1997 (with few decision-makers listening on both sides of the Atlantic), EU and US public opinions are now at odds in many ways. Including (if not even more) in the countries whose leaders have pledged full support to Washington during this crisis.

In a way the US did loose the Europeans in this crisis. I mean that European citizens now see the US with a great concern and feel reluctant to follow any US-led path. This underlines the need for bold initiatives if we want to prevent EU/US conflicts to become a daily process.

But it also asks for true innovation. American and European futures are now on separate courses. It is only by building common projects and developing interactions of a new kind between the two societies (on the political level indeed, but seen from the side of civil societies rather than from the side of those top-leaders who were unable to prevent the drift) , that Transatlantic partnership can have a constructive input into the 21st century.

One-sided approaches are not only doomed to fail; but they will increase opposition.

The key to future relations is to offer to the other side ... not to ask from it. What can US participants in the Convention bring to Europeans? What can a European member of US Senate or US Supreme Court bring to the Americans? These are the preliminary questions to bear in mind.