The effects of the eurozone crisis and of the global financial crisis are not crippling European foreign policy, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said on Thursday.

Van Rompuy told an audience at the Chatham House think-tank that despite the distractions and handicap of the global financial crisis and the crisis in the eurozone, European leaders remain fully engaged in global matters, citing engagement at the recent Chicago NATO summit and the preceding meeting of G8 leaders.

"Fears that Europe's foreign policy is falling victim to the debt crisis seem to me an exaggeration, but we have been weakened by the crisis," he said in the address entitled "The Power of the Union."

"A common foreign policy also is a matter of disproportionate expectations; we cannot expect Europe to suddenly turn into a new superpower," he added.

Van Rompuy, the first president of the European Council who was appointed to his role in 2009 and begins his second and final two-and-a-half year term this week, called for Europe to be a global player and for its nations to work towards greater cooperation.

Van Rompuy said the rise of emerging powers was "striking" and evident from late 2008 onward with the establishment of the G20.

The "deep changes" of this realignment had not yet been fully assimilated, he said.

Van Rompuy said the West had "lost certain monopolies we have held for two centuries, economically and politically. It is a relative decline which it would be counter-productive to deny, and for humanity as a whole it is not bad news. It has allowed hundreds of millions of people to climb out of poverty."

He said the loss of monopoly did not mean the loss of power as "the West still has major assets," and that on a crowded global stage it made more sense for European nations to work together.

Europe should remain a global player, he said.

"As the largest trade partner of the East Asian economies, we not only have a stake in the region's stability but also contribute to it. That is why Europe must remain globally engaged," he said.

"Europe has a role to play politically, economically and also militarily and in most cases European countries can perform better by working jointly. Leveraging our strength by aligning positions, pooling resources, acting in the world as a club and increasingly as a team," he added.