S partnership now covers the full range of foreign policy issues. The EU and the US are also linked by close security ties and a similar set of values, belief in democratic government, human rights and market economics. They share a common concern in handling effectively a wide variety of political and security issues across the world.Even if transatlantic achievements in the area of foreign policy are less visible and numerous than in the trade policy field, it is becoming increasingly evident that, in politics as in economics, where they have common interests the EU and the US can achieve more by acting together than when they act separately. This could be seen through the example of Kosovo and the Middle East peace process.There are other areas, however, where EU-US cooperation still has a good deal of scope for improvement. In some cases, co-operation has been held back by internal political factors: in the case of the EU this sometimes reflects the difficulty of achieving consensus between all Member States. On the US side, lack of support in Congress for multilateral commitments (such as in the case of UN financing, the Anti-Landmines Convention and the ratification of Chemical Weapons Convention) can sometimes be problematic. Different policy approaches also exist towards certain "countries of concern", and in particular Iran and Cuba. Whilst the EU fully shares the US's determination to ensure international security and full respect of human rights and democratic principles, the EU does not share the US's political strategy of isolating these countries.In conclusion, I would like to say that diversity of Amercian society owes much to successive waves of immigration from practically every European country during the course of the past five hundred years, and this accounts for the extent to which Europeans and Americans share common values and maintain close cultural, economic, social and political ties. Both the US and the Europe...
