, Russian president
Vladimir Putin and Solana at the EU-Russia summit in Rome, 2003 , 2004 After leaving NATO, Solana took up a role in the
European Union. Earlier in the year, on 4 June 1999, he was appointed by the
Cologne European Council as Secretary-General of the
Council of the European Union. An administrative position but it was decided that the Secretary-General would also be appointed
High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). In this role he represented the EU abroad where there was an agreed common policy. He took up the post on 18 October 1999, shortly after standing down from NATO. The post has a budget of €40 million, most of which went to Balkan operations. From 25 November 1999 he was also appointed Secretary-General of
Western European Union (WEU), overseeing the transfer of responsibilities from that organisation to the CFSP. In 2004 his 5-year mandate was renewed. He also became president of the
European Defence Agency. The
Clinton administration claimed in May 2000 that Solana was the fulfilment of
Henry Kissinger's famous desire to have a phone number to talk to Europe. In December 2003 Solana released the
European Security Strategy, which sets out the main priorities and identifies the main threats to the security of the EU, including terrorism. On 25 March 2004 Solana appointed
Gijs de Vries as the anti-terrorist co-ordinator for the CFSP, and outlined his duties as being to streamline, organise and co-ordinate the EU's fight against terrorism. On 29 June 2004 he was designated to become the EU's first "Union Minister for Foreign Affairs", a position created by the
European Constitutional Treaty combining the head of the
CFSP with that of the
European Commissioner for External Relations. It would give a single voice to foreign policy and combine the powers and influence of the two posts with a larger budget, more staff and a coherent diplomatic corps. The position (colloquially known as "Mr. Europe") has been partly maintained in the
Reform Treaty as
High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, but Solana is not going to take the post as he announced that he would step down at the end of his term. In late 2004, Solana held secret negotiations with
Hamas leaders, saying that he met them at a time when there seemed to be an opportunity for progress, and were to "pass a clear message of what the international community wants", and said that the meetings occurred "months" before.
Foreign affairs in April 2003 He negotiated a number of Treaties of Association between the European Union and various Middle Eastern and
Latin American countries, including
Bolivia and
Colombia. Solana played a pivotal role in unifying the remainder of the former Yugoslavian federation. He proposed that
Montenegro form a union with
Serbia instead of having full independence, stating that this was done to avoid a
domino effect from
Kosovo and
Vojvodina independence demands. Local media sarcastically named the new country "Solania". On 21 January 2002 Solana said that the detainees at
Guantanamo Bay should be treated as prisoners of war under the
Geneva Convention. The EU has stated that it hopes to avoid another war like the
Iraqi invasion through this and future negotiations, and Solana has said the most difficult moments of his job were when the United Kingdom and France, the two permanent EU
Security Council members, were in
disagreement. The so-called
Vilnius letter, a declaration of support by eastern European countries for the United States' aim of régime change in Iraq, and
the letter of the eight, a similar letter from the UK, Italy, and six second-tier countries, are generally seen as a low-water mark of the CFSP. in
Ukraine, on 1 December 2004 Solana has played an important role working toward a resolution to the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and continues to be a primary architect of the "
Road Map for Peace," along with the UN, Russia, and the United States in the
Quartet on the Middle East. On 22 July 2004 he met
Ariel Sharon in Israel. Sharon had originally refused to meet Solana, but eventually accepted that, whether he liked it or not, the EU was involved in the Road Map. He criticised Israel for obstructing the
Palestinian presidential election of 9 January 2005, but then met Sharon again on 13 January. In November 2004 Solana assisted the United Kingdom, France and Germany in negotiating a nuclear material enrichment freeze with
Iran. In the same month he was involved in mediating between the two presidential candidates in the
post-election developments in Ukraine, and on 21 January 2005 he invited Ukraine's new President
Viktor Yushchenko to discuss future EU membership. , Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, Finnish Prime Minister
Matti Vanhanen and Solana at the EU-India summit in Helsinki, 2006 In 2010, after he had left office, Solana signed a petition along with 25 other EU leaders directed at his successor,
Catherine Ashton, calling for EU sanctions on
Israel in response to continued
settlement construction in the
West Bank. ==Other activities==