Unequal relations
…Prime Minister Costas Simitis, rather than using realistic terms to describe Western Europe’s defensive dependence on the United States and thereby enabling the issue of the European rapid reaction force to be viewed objectively, chose to employ a different concept that promotes equality between the European Union and NATO. However, the point at which Simitis clearly overstepped the mark was when he tried to justify the government’s handling at the time of the joint extra-institutional initiative between Britain, the United States and Turkey, which resulted in the Istanbul document that satisfies Ankara’s desire to neutralize the Aegean Sea in the context of «European security.» In justifying the inertia of his government, Greece’s prime minister even reached the point of comparing the initiative of the three NATO members with the consultation he had with his Dutch counterpart Wim Kok over the issue of small and medium-sized enterprises. It is clear that Simitis does not fully grasp the particular weight of foreign policy issues as he is inclined to equate them with relatively minor economic matters. In the same way, he does not realize that, in essence, any settlement regarding the relationship between European defense and security policy and NATO will not reflect the equality but rather the superiority of NATO over the EU, and will for this reason take Turkey’s interests into consideration.
