The US ambassador to the EU has brushed aside speculation that the ascendance of China or confusion arising from the Lisbon Treaty have undermined the special relationship between the two sides.

Focusing on the EU’s importance in the areas of security and crisis-relief, the ambassador, William E. Kennard, told EUobserver in an interview: “Anytime anything dramatic happens in the world …the world looks to what the US and the EU are going to do.”

“We have with the EU and its member states a shared history and a shared sense of values that we don’t have with any other large bloc of people,” he said. “The US and the EU collectively represent 800 million democratically-elected people, and so when issues arise, whether it’s of human rights violations or the need to bring stability to troubled parts of the world, whether it’s Afghanistan or Pakistan or the Middle East, the EU is our logical partner.”

The diplomat underlined President Barack Obama’s belief in multilateralism and progress in ties with China and Russia. But he indicated that the level of trust between the EU and US exceeds what it has with the emerging powers.

“We don’t share the same culture, history or values with Russia,” he said. “It’s a different category altogether.”

Mr Kennard arrived in Brussels in January at an awkward moment. The US at the Copenhagen climate summit in December clinched a last-minute deal on emissions with Brazil, South Africa, India and China, leaving the EU out of the room.

In February, the Spanish EU presidency learned via the media that President Obama planned to skip an upcoming summit. A US spokesman at the time said Washington did not know who was in charge in Europe following passage of the Lisbon Treaty. The European Parliament subsequently compounded unease by voting down a transatlantic pact on counter-terrorism, the so-called “Swift” agreement.

The US ambassador laid part of the responsibility for the summit debacle on Spain: “We had never committed to a summit and we had never told the Spanish government that we were coming to Madrid in May. I think there may have been an assumption that we were,” he said.

He also hinted that the meeting was a diplomatic nicety rather than a venue for pressing decisions. “All of our political leaders have incredible demands on their time, we have to be careful in deploying their time to make sure there are defined outcomes,” Mr Kennard said.

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