The European Union and the Asia-Pacific region: a Polish perspective: Peter Kennedy reports on a panel discussion with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski on 3 May 2013.

• Author: Kennedy, Peter
• Position: SEMINAR REPORT - Discussion

After being introduced by Professor Rob Rabel, Foreign Minister Radoslaw (Radek) Sikorski opened the discussion by referring to the long trip from Poland to New Zealand and the 'gravitational experience' of passing over China. He had come from a European Union that was changing and reforming but 'determined to have a harvest time soon'. The problem of indebtedness was not intrinsically European (the debt to GDP ratio of the United States was worse). This was not the first crisis in the European Union, nor would it be the last. The European Union contained one-quarter of the world's GDP, more than the United States and more than Brazil, India and China together. It included also over one-quarter of the world's currency resources (in Euro)--including one-quarter of the New Zealand Reserve Bank's foreign reserves. Finally, it was the biggest exporter and second biggest importer in the world.

Minister Sikorski said he liked to think that Poland was one of the six bigger countries in the European Union. The group cannot be run by the United Kingdom, France and Germany alone. Further, since the beginning of the crisis Poland's growth has been 20 per cent, compared to zero for the European Union as a whole. The Poles 'would do almost anything to survive and prosper'. Poland had not yet adopted the single currency but was treaty bound to do so. Its largest trading partner was no longer NAFTA but ASEAN, with China the second single country partner after the United States.

The first to respond to the minister was Professor Martin Holland of Canterbury University. He noted that there was something of a 'time lag' in Asia and Australasia in understanding what the European Union was all about. The European Union was almost absent from our media. Foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton had yet to visit South-east Asia and there remained a challenge working out 'who speaks for Europe'. The focus tends to be on German Chancellor Merkel or French President Hollande rather than EU institutions.

Professor Rob Ayson of Victoria University added that the role of the European Union in Asia seemed rather modest, in contrast to its role in its immediate partnership area. China has found it can pursue its own interests within the existing systems, but remains desirous of changing...