Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340-354)
Mr Kees Klompenhouwer and Lieutenant-General David
Leakey
1 JULY 2008
Q340 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Institutionally
what do they do? Is it within the MFA?
Mr Klompenhouwer: I am not sure exactly
how they have structured it. I am going to visit Sweden and find
out. One of the things they also do is integrate it into career
paths, which is very important because if it means by being sent
on an international mission that it is the end of your national
police career, that does not help.
Q341 Lord Anderson of Swansea: It
is a badge for promotion.
Mr Klompenhouwer: It is all on a voluntary
basis. We want to get good people, not just people who are available.
Q342 Chairman: Redundant.
Mr Klompenhouwer: This is a very important
issue and that is why we need the ministers of justice and the
interior to buy into this.
Q343 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Most
of the people you would want to recruit would be in domestic ministries
rather than the MFA?
Mr Klompenhouwer: Yes, absolutely. MFAs
are trying to make troops available—the Netherlands is trying
to do that—and slowly the ministers of the justice and interior
are responding. It depends on the type of police corps you have.
For instance, we have Gendarmerie type forces and they are easily
mobilised sometimes by the ministry of defence. You also have
a regional police corps for the south-west Netherlands.
Q344 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Can
I move on to the Security Strategy. There has been five years
of experience with Macedonia, Bosnia, with respect relatively
easy at that time, and now there are new terrains, new spectrums
of military-civilian. Is there a document or something which you
have to be incorporated into the new revised Strategy as to things
you would like to see with a new emphasis over the next five or
10 years as a result of that lessons learned experience?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: We have a
lessons learned process on both the military and civilian sides
which go out separately because there are things in the police
in which we are not interested on the military side. After all
of the operations there is a process we go through and the ones
that we describe as common lessons or where there are overlap
areas come together. The answer is there is a process. Some of
these things are quite low level. To give you an example, we have
just been through a major process on the military side having
been through the Congo operation, which was a very demanding operation
and tested our concepts for planning, operational headquarters,
the force headquarters, the infrastructure, the logistics, strategic
lift, rules of engagement, CIS architecture, everything was tested
to stretching point. As a consequence of the Congo operation and
an exhaustive lessons process, in which Member States were deeply
involved, we have rewritten about seven of our overarching concepts
of how we do the operations.
Q345 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Are
there key principles which, in your judgment, following that experience
can be carried forward into the Security Strategy rewrite?
Lieutenant-General Leakey: They are just
a touch below that level.
Q346 Chairman: If there were subordinate
documents going to be prepared, which people sometimes talk about,
then one might think that among the list of things, together with
adopting the document in December, there are various things which
should be done and one might be something referring to how lessons
learned could be more effectively integrated or something like
this and discussed in Member States. Perhaps it is being done
already.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: Funnily enough,
on lessons learned there could be an overarching document.
Q347 Chairman: I am always a bit
worried that as far as lessons learned in European and even slightly
wider international organisations people are sometimes a little
anxious to pull their punches because they do not want to say
the sorts of things which you have said recently. Somehow one
ought to find some way to ensure messages do get fed back from
things which have not gone as well as they should have done.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: On the lessons
learned, we have had major spats in trying to get the lessons
honestly agreed—major spats—and some Member States
have just said, "Look, I'm sorry but you cannot write that
down on a piece of paper".
Q348 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: Can
I return to your opening remarks about the Chief of Police in
Amsterdam whose problem is British football hooligans and not
Kosovo. That is the world he is living in, he has no incentive
whatsoever to send any of his even substandard policemen to Kosovo.
Lieutenant-General Leakey: That is right.
Q349 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: Unless
you pay him. There has got to be a financial deal here. Where
does the money come from to fund an overseas liability? You have
bank clerks in England who are members of the Territorial Army
and the next thing is they find themselves in Iraq. Why can we
not fix that? Where would the money come from? It has got to come
from Europe rather than the Dutch budget, has it not?
Mr Klompenhouwer: Or both. We have various
sorts of personnel. First of all we have those people who are
contracted by the Commission, experts. Then we have the operational
people on active duty who are seconded by Member States, so their
salary is being paid by the Member States. Then the EU supplements
that with a per diem.
Q350 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: When
they are deployed?
Mr Klompenhouwer: When they are deployed.
This money for the per diem comes from the Commission's budget,
so we have to provide all that. This budget is scrutinised in
a group called RELEX which is very anxious to prevent any undue
expenditure, as they should be. However, the net result of that
is that a seconded European policeman in Afghanistan receives
less pay than an expert contracted by the Commission. He receives
less pay than if he was engaged in NATO. I am talking about the
most difficult theatre, Afghanistan. The same applies everywhere
else. In Kosovo one of the things we are supposed to do now is
transition police personnel who are now in UNMIK to EULEX. They
know the terrain, they would be perfect. They would not have to
move them and it would be a very economical solution. However,
because of the system, those who accept the move from UNMIK employment
to EU employment under EULEX will also face a decrease in their
revenue because of the tight budgetary rules that affect the EULEX
group. I do not want to blame the group, I just point at a systemic
problem. What we are seeing here is exactly the contrary of the
image that the EU has of being a big spender, et cetera. It is
exactly the contrary. Coincidentally, it is usually the same Member
States who are careful about Community expenditure, including
my own, which are causing these problems. For me, as an operational
chap, this is a real issue.
Q351 Chairman: But there is also
the problem which applies to all of these things that in terms
of deployment people who are generous in deployment have also
to be generous in spending, so there are asymmetries in a sense,
those who contribute the most pay the most as far as these things
are concerned. As I said yesterday, the Leader of Lord Hamilton's
party recently made a very interesting speech as far as NATO operations
are concerned which suggests that those who do not contribute
should pay. It is something which will take quite a lot of working
through in practice because the whole tradition has been—I
always get this phrase wrong—costs lie where they fall or
fall where they lie. It means that whoever sends pays. When you
do a security sector reform mission, and there are quite a number
of those involved, are those joint between people in uniform and
civilians? How are they worked through?
Mr Klompenhouwer: We have one now in
Guinea-Bissau which ended up under civilian leadership because
it was decided in the end that was the most logical formula. It
also involves reforming the ministry of defence and in the planning
stage we have had a lot of support from General Leakey's staff
but also from the Directorate DG8 which deals with military matters.
In a bureaucratic sense it may be difficult in the beginning to
figure out who is in the lead but in the end, with a lot of goodwill
and commonsense, it works out. We have a few examples of that.
Q352 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Can
I ask about intelligence. The Commission is notoriously leaky,
the culture is transparent, against the whole spirit of military
operations. To what extent has the intelligence problem, intelligence
sharing, readiness to give good intelligence to partners, been
solved and how watertight are we now?
Mr Klompenhouwer: On the civilian intelligence
I would like to say the arrangements that we have with the SitCen
are not perfect but it is not a bad beginning. It is improved
analysis which helps us make a judgment about the risk that we
are taking when undertaking a mission. It is very important to
do it, but also for pay rates and other things. This is an important
first step. I do not think that these documents always leak because
they are carefully handled. This is good news. Of course, this
is not really intelligence, it is analysis which has been fed
by occasional intelligence that some Member States have.
Q353 Lord Anderson of Swansea: The
raw material.
Mr Klompenhouwer: Yes, that has been
processed.
Q354 Chairman: It is product-proof.
Mr Klompenhouwer: I do not know. It depends
on the complexity of the operation and political and other terms
that determine how much you are going to need to undertake. Of
course, there is the question of intelligence in the field. In
Afghanistan, our civilian mission benefits from intelligence received
in the field from NATO. Not everything, of course, on a need-to-know
basis, but that intelligence is risk-oriented so if one receives
intelligence that there is a threat against the EUPOL mission
then the warning comes through. It has taken some effort to get
this in place but it is there.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom: Is that American-led
in Afghanistan?
Chairman: We are very grateful that you have
been able to give so much time. The fact that we have moved beyond
the particular subject of the ESS is really because in our weekly
work, and we meet every Thursday for a couple of hours, as well
as doing longer term studies we are considering all of the things
which are moving between the Council Secretariat and the GAERC
and, therefore, tend to comment and write to ministers about proposals
for redactions of various sorts. Quite a lot of the things that
you have been talking about are things which have come before
us. We have steered deliberately off of questions about Afghanistan
police missions because we know that in the autumn Dublin is coming
up but the sort of discussion we have had this morning has been
extremely valuable in giving us a feel for how it is seen by you
in your different ways having to cope with these things in practice.
We are really grateful and it has been very useful for the Committee
to have had the chance to meet you today. Thank you very much.
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