Former European Commissioner Gunter Verheugen, whose 10 years in office ended Tuesday, talks to Spiegel Online  about E.U.-U.S. relations, the prospect of a common E.U. military and the union's lack of vision.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The new European Commission was approved Tuesday, thereby ending your 10 years as a commissioner in Brussels. Is the E.U. still an alliance of nations on the way to an ever-closer union, or is it just a bigger club with the same old problems?

Gunter Verheugen: With the 27 members that it has today, compared to the 15 that it had back then, the E.U. has obviously changed dramatically. We have achieved much in those 10 years, but a few fundamental questions remain open: There seems to be no vision within the Union of where we are heading. There is no consensus over where the borders of the E.U. should lie in the future, and there is no consensus over how we should define our role in the world.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is it not too late for that already? Barack Obama recently canceled his participation in the upcoming E.U.-U.S. summit. Has our continent become unimportant to the Americans?

Verheugen: No. The overwhelming strategic importance of the trans-Atlantic relationship won't change. The Americans expect more participation in global affairs from our side, but we are not ready for that. We want to be taken seriously by the Americans as partners, therefore we should first develop our ability to be partners.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In the public perception, you and your colleagues represent the whole E.U. apparatus, which is held in increasing disdain. Why is the Commission viewed as the epitome of bureaucratic hell?

Verheugen: That isn't fair. The Commission is the motor and powerhouse of European integration. But I concede that the image of the Commission is still too strongly influenced by the idea that it is some kind of many-tentacled bureaucratic monster that wants to regulate and harmonize more and more areas of people's lives.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But there are good reasons for that impression.

Verheugen: To me, achieving a cultural shift in the institutions of the European Union has been of the highest importance over the last few years. I have tried to get away from the mentality that the European project can only be achieved through more and more rules. That said, whatever we communicate has to go through the twin filters of the national media and national politics. In many countries, especially in Germany, the bad habit has developed of always putting the blame for anything unpleasant on "those people in Brussels". A lot of what we do is very technical, the language is horribly overblown and bureaucratic through and through. It's something that is difficult for people to understand.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is that resignation in the face of a self-created monster? You have complained often enough that is hard to get anything done with all the bureaucracy.