House of Commons - Defence

Select Committee on Defence Eighth Report

EIGHTH REPORT

The Defence Committee has agreed to the following Report:—

EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENCE

INTRODUCTION

The European Scrutiny Committee Reference

1. On 1 December 1999 the European Scrutiny Committee requested an 'Opinion' from the Defence Committee on European Union Document No. 20699, the Finnish Presidency's Progress Report to the Helsinki European Council on Strengthening of the Common European Policy on Security and Defence: First Measures on the Military Instruments of Crisis Management and Guidance for Further Work.[8] We particularly welcomed this invitation as this subject was one we had under active consideration, and on which we had already commented extensively in our report last year on the future of NATO.[9] This is the first time the European Scrutiny Committee has exercised its relatively new power[10] under S.O. No. 143(11) to request such an Opinion. The standing order does not set out how such an Opinion should be offered, or what it should cover. However, the remit of the European Scrutiny Committee itself is to examine European Union documents and—

We have assumed that it is these questions that our Opinion should address.

2. We have been asked for an Opinion on the implementation of a decision now made by the EU's member states' governments. We have not been asked to consider the general competence of the EU and, since we would be unlikely to be able to reach a consensus on such a question, we have made no attempt to address it.

The Progress Report

3. The document we have been asked to consider, which was adopted at the Helsinki Summit on 10-11 December 1999, announces two principal strands of activity within the European Union over the next year and beyond. The first, and probably most important, is the adoption of a so-called—

... common European headline goal ... for readily deployable military capabilities, to be achieved through coordinated national and multinational efforts, for carrying out the full range of Petersberg [eg humanitarian and peacekeeping] tasks.[

The implementation of this goal (intended to enable the generation of a force of around 60,000 personnel and the necessary support available for rapid deployment) will be taken forward over the next two years.

4. The second strand relates to the establishment within the EU of institutions to provide co-ordinated political and strategic control of these deployable multinational military capabilities.[13] These have now been established on an interim basis[14] and consist of:

A Political and Security Committee (PSC) in Brussels, composed of permanent representatives of the member states.[15]

A Military Committee, composed of the Chiefs of Defence Staff of member states or their delegates, reporting to the PSC.[16]

A Military Staff, within the secretariat of the EU's General Affairs Council (GAC), to perform 'early warning, situation assessment and strategic planning' under the direction of the Military Committee.[17]

5. The third element of activity set out in the Progress Report is the establishment of principles and mechanisms for cooperation between the EU member states, non-EU European NATO allies and other European partners; and for EU-NATO cooperation on military crisis management.[18]

6. It is the implications of these proposals for the development of an EU military capability and the institutions required to deploy it which we will examine in this report.

The CESDP, the CFSP and the ESDI

7. The Helsinki proposals refer to the 'Common European Security and Defence Policy' (CESDP). This is also referred to as the ESDP. The possibility of a 'common defence policy' was first mentioned in the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, but it is only now that it is being talked about as something both concrete and realisable. The CESDP, the Secretary of State told us, was the "strict, technical title" of the European Defence Initiative launched by the UK at the informal European Council at Pörtschach, Austria in the autumn of 1998.[19] The Prime Minister described this as—

8. The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), to which the Prime Minister referred, is established under Title V of the Treaty of European Union (as first embodied in the Maastricht Treaty and subsequently adapted by the Amsterdam Treaty). This states that—

The Union shall define and implement a common foreign and security policy covering all areas of foreign and security policy, the objectives of which shall be:

to safeguard the common values, fundamental interests, independence and integrity of the Union in conformity with the principles of the United Nations Charter;
to strengthen the security of the Union in all ways;
to preserve peace and strengthen international security, in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter, as well as the principles of the Helsinki Final Act and the objectives of the Paris Charter, including those on external borders;
to promote international cooperation;
to develop and consolidate democracy and the rule of law, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.[21]

The general direction of the CFSP is to be determined by the European Council (the Heads of State and Heads of Governments who meet twice yearly at the European Summits) and is to be implemented by the Council of Ministers. The Treaty states that—

The Council [of Ministers] shall take the decisions necessary for defining and implementing the common foreign and security policy on the basis of the general guidelines defined by the European Council ... shall recommend common strategies to the European Council and shall implement them, in particular by adopting joint actions and common positions [and] shall ensure the unity, consistency and effectiveness of action by the Union.[22]

The CESDP rests on this second 'pillar' of the EU.[23]

9. In its final communiqué from the Helsinki Summit the European Council announced that it had adopted—

... the two Presidency progress reports ... on developing the Union's military and non-military crisis management capability as part of a strengthened common European policy on security and defence [and underlined] its determination to develop an autonomous capacity to take decisions and, where NATO as a whole is not engaged, to launch and conduct EU-led military operations in response to international crises.

"This process" it added, "will avoid unnecessary duplication and does not imply the creation of a European army".[24]

10. We asked the Secretary of State to explain how the CESDP relates to the European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI). He defined the ESDI as a NATO initiative, which—

Since 1985, the Western European Union (WEU) has been the institutional mechanism for the development of the ESDI. In his evidence to us on 16 February this year, the Secretary of State described the WEU as reaching "... the end of its sensible working life ...".[26] He went on—

11. Although the ESDI has been under active development for over ten years, the decision to take the WEU out of the equation and locate the ESDI within the EU has created a new set of problems which the EU and NATO must now try to resolve. Essentially, these concern how to integrate the six European NATO Allies who are not members of the EU into the CESDP, and how to integrate the four members of the EU who are not NATO Allies into the ESDI. These problems are what the institutional mechanisms set out in the Finnish Presidency's Progress Report are intended to solve. How these arrangements might work is a central question which we examine below. Future enlargement of the EU may also be affected by the way in which the CESDP develops.

12. Before we turn to that more detailed examination of the future arrangements for EU/NATO cooperation set out in the Progress Report, we review briefly the history of the development of the European pillar of NATO.

EUROPEAN SECURITY STRUCTURES

	EU	WEU	NATO
BELGIUM	Member	Member	Member
FRANCE	Member	Member	Member
GERMANY	Member	Member	Member
GREECE	Member	Member	Member
ITALY	Member	Member	Member
LUXEMBOURG	Member	Member	Member
NETHERLANDS	Member	Member	Member
PORTUGAL	Member	Member	Member
SPAIN	Member	Member	Member
UK	Member	Member	Member
DENMARK	Member	Observer	Member
AUSTRIA	Member	Observer	Neutral
FINLAND	Member	Observer	Neutral
IRELAND	Member	Observer	Neutral
SWEDEN	Member	Observer	Neutral
CZECH REPUBLIC	Applicant	Associate Member	Member
HUNGARY	Applicant	Associate Member	Member
ICELAND		Associate Member	Member
NORWAY		Associate Member	Member
POLAND	Applicant	Associate Member	Member
TURKEY	Applicant	Associate Member	Member
ALBANIA			Applicant
BULGARIA	Applicant	Associate Partner	Applicant
ESTONIA	Applicant	Associate Partner	Applicant
LATVIA	Applicant	Associate Partner	Applicant
LITHUANIA	Applicant	Associate Partner	Applicant
MACEDONIA			Applicant
ROMANIA	Applicant	Associate Partner	Applicant
SLOVAKIA	Applicant	Associate Partner	Applicant
SLOVENIA	Applicant	Associate Partner	Applicant