European Union should abandon principle of unanimous decision-making in order to not hide from the US "like rabbits from boa" due to fear of sanctions, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said.
"We shouldn't hide like rabbits from boa because of economic sanctions or customs duties," he said.
In addition, Maas assured that there's no division in Europe, highlighting the EU's response to introduction of Washington's customs duties and the US withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, RIA Novosti reports.
At the same time, he noted that there's a need to change the way important foreign policy decisions of the EU are made, because current regulations, based on unanimity, create tensions within the EU itself.
As senior fellow at the European Studies Center of the Russian Academy of Science, Vladimir Olenchenko, noted in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza, current decision-making principles are inconvenient for European leaders.
"When the European Union was established in its original form, there were fewer countries, so they had equal saying in decision-making. Everything changes in 2004, when 10 countries joined the European Union - the Baltic countries, Slovenia, Cyprus, then Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia. As a result, everything became much more difficult. Newcomers are located in different parts of Europe, they're affected by different circumstances, both climatic, historical, and economic. They all have different points of view on different problems, so it's hard to achieve unity. That's why current decisions of the EU don't correspond to interests of some countries," he pointed out.
Head of the European Studies Center of the Russian Academy of Science, Alexei Kuznetsov, stressed that Germany begins to feel the need to change European politics just now. "In order to change current decision-making system, it's necessary to carry out huge institutional changes, and it requires consensus in all EU countries," he said.
"It's interesting that initially, consensus was needed in order to protect rights of small EU member states from hegemony Germany, France and other major EU members. But now situation has completely changed, the United States, traditional partner of Europe, emerged as unfair competitor, Russia became an enemy of certain European countries, while remaining a strategic partner of others. Major European powers have to react to this situation somehow, so it's pretty logical that German foreign minister offered such option - but it doesn't mean that any project be implemented quickly," expert warned.
