Opinion: Has the Transatlantic Ice Age Ended?

Mini summit, truffle summit, rebel summit and anti-American summit -- Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg were subject to copious criticism in the run-up to their meeting in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss European Union defense policy.

But the participants have only themselves to blame given that the two-hour conference was only attended by the EU countries that headed up the European anti-war front against the recent U.S. military operations in Iraq. Neither Greece, which currently holds the EU rotating presidency, nor EU chief diplomat Javier Solana, who is responsible for the union's foreign and security policies, went to Brussels -- not to mention Britain, the most important military power in the current 15-member alliance.

To general astonishment Belgium, Germany, France and Luxembourg's unilateralism did not emerge as an anti-American demonstration or alienate the rest of the EU club.

Instead the four heads of state actually managed to give European security and defense policy -- which has been going nowhere for some time -- a new impetus.

Rejuvenation

The suggestions include creating an EU military headquarters to lead the union's rapid reaction force, to improve air transport capacities and to establish effective protection against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. European Union member states are meant to carry out the changes in cooperation in order to share tight military resources and budgets and ultimately become more powerful as an alliance.

The suggestions aren't new; they have been issues for some time in NATO and in the European Security and Defense Union, the EU counterpart to the North Atlantic military alliance, though little has been done so far. But after the Iraq War, it seems that the four European statesmen are anxious to put the pedal to the metal.

We will have to wait and see whether joint military armament will actually be a success, but doubt is already warranted, since the states' defense budgets are scarcely able to meet current needs.

Mending ties

What was more important about this summit, however, was the political message that Gerhard Schröder, Jacques Chirac, Guy Verhofstadt and Jean-Claude Juncker unanimously relayed: transatlantic relations are indispensable. Chancellor Schröder brought it to the point: "In NATO, we do not have too much America, we have too little Europe."

On top of that, the suggestions to strengthen military ties and cooperation within the union are open to all other EU states, including Britain, Spain and Italy -- the main European advocates for the war against Iraq -- in particular.

Those are quite a few results for a two-hour meeting. They included a glimmer of hope that the dissonance -- or, more accurately, the ice age in Europe as a result of the Iraq War -- will end soon and they are also an offer of reconciliation to the United States.

Gerda Meuer is Deutsche Welle's Brussels correspondent.