I would argue that foreign policy today is about aligning all our national aims so that they're

directed at dealing with these same global targets and that particularly applies to the EU and the

US. These challenges face us in a world in which has been transformed over the last I would say

two decades, and it has been transformed in a very positive sense. The values that we have

been propagating, we, the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, are the values of market

economy, the rule of law, of democratic freedoms. Those values have swept across the former

Soviet Empire since 1989. Those values have allowed the massive spread of prosperity in

Asia, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. Those same values have brought down one after

another, authoritarian regimes in Latin America. And those values have become part of the

consensus on what developing countries must do, if they aspire to rise out of poverty and misery.

And those are our values, and I think we can be proud of that.

Which brings me to the EU-US relationship. I'm going to quote Chris Patten again in a recent

speech: “No one shares our vision, the European vision, our history and our values as much as

the United States. With no one else do we have such a wide range of common interests, such a

fine national network of cooperation on all levels, such a strong economic base to build on.”

That commonality of values and of interests is the foundation of the Trans-Atlantic relationship.

And you will find it affirmed and reaffirmed in the Trans-Atlantic Declaration of the year 1990,

when I was in charge of trans-Atlantic relations in Brussels. And you'll find it reaffirmed in

the new trans-Atlantic agenda adopted in December 1995 which shifts the focus of our

relationship from just consultation to joint action. And a large part of the job of trans-Atlantic

relations of the last 10 years or so has been not to allow the spats and frictions which occur

across the Atlantic to obscure the importance of the common values in what we do. We've

always said we need to focus on the positive and downplay the negative. It's not always been

easy, but I think perhaps in the current climate we will agree for a moment to forget about

bananas and talk about terrorism.