Memorandum by Mr Nick Witney, Defence
Analyst
1. In this evidence, I offer some reflections
on the concept of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PSC)—from
the perspective of a former Chief Executive of the European Defence
Agency (EDA), and a soon-to-be Senior Policy Fellow of the European
Council on Foreign Relations.
2. PSC aims to establish a core group of those
Member States "whose military capabilities fulfil higher
criteria and which have made more binding commitments
to one another in this area with a view to the most demanding
missions" [Article 28 A(6) of the amended Treaty on European
Union (TEU)].
3. The criteria and commitments are essentially
about improving defence capabilities, and providing operational
forces, specifically Battlegroups [Articles 1 and 2 of the Protocol
on PSC]. "Defence capabilities" is broadly interpreted—from
effective forces, to levels of investment, to equipment programmes,
to training and logistics. There is a strong, though not exclusive,
emphasis on doing things together—multinational forces,
European equipment collaborations, other EDA-sponsored activities.
4. Against this background, I make below two
main points:
— PSC could give a powerful impetus
to the objectives which the EDA was established to promote—in
essence, better defence capabilities and a stronger defence industry
and technology in Europe; but
— To be effective, the PSC arrangements
will have to be a good deal more sophisticated than the simple
(self-)designation of a "core group" might seem to imply.
5. PSC and EDA—complementary initiatives.
It is evident from the key texts on PSC (Article 28 of the amended
TEU, the relevant Protocol ) that the EDA is intended to be closely
linked. The broad interpretation of "defence capabilities"
in the Treaty echoes the missions and tasks of the EDA. Under
PSC, the EDA will provide assessments (Article 3 of the Protocol);
involvement in EDA activities is foreseen as a PSC criterion (Article
1). And the very concept of pace-setting, small-group cooperation
is already reflected in the EDA's modus operandi, both in theory
(Article 28 D(3) of the amended TEU) and in practice.
6. To amplify this last point—the EDA,
like the rest of ESDP, is a fundamentally "intergovernmental"
enterprise. All member states (MS) are deeply conscious of the
centrality of national sovereignty in matters of defence. No MS
is going to be ordered by some supranational authority to commit
its young men and women to operations; no MS is going to be told
how to spend its defence budget. (These are, incidentally, the
two points which explode "Euroarmy" myths.) At the same
time, both operational and economic logic urges Europeans to cooperate
more closely in matters of defence. These two imperatives—preservation
of sovereignty, strengthening of cooperation—are reconciled
through "variable geometry'—a flexible approach whereby
different groups come together at different times and in different
combinations, on a voluntary basis, to develop particular areas
of cooperation.
7. Thus the EDA's defence equipment market initiative
was initially joined by only 22 of the original 24 MS participating
in the Agency (itself a matter of choice for all MS); 5 of the
24 decided not to join the first R&T Joint Investment Programme;
whilst other collaborative projects such as Software Defined Radio
or Combat Equipment for the Dismounted Soldier have only 5 or
6 participants.
8. Indeed, a key aim of the EDA is simply to
provide a forum or meeting-place in which MS may come together
and find partners for different projects of particular interest
to each of them, forming different combinations. In practice,
however, there has to date been a certain lack of initiative on
the part of the MS, who have generally preferred, rather than
to table their own proposals, to wait for the core staff of the
EDA to come up with ideas. This passivity, whilst understandable,
has significantly detracted from the progress which the EDA enterprise
has so far been able to make.
9. PSC, by introducing a new political dynamic
and creating new small-group combinations, could be a key means
for stimulating a more imaginative and energetic MS input to the
increasingly urgent task of raising Europe's game on defence.
10. But it's not as simple as a "defence
Eurozone". The immediate practical question is "who
should be in and who should be out?"—or perhaps "what
exactly are these "criteria" and "commitments"
which should determine membership of this core group?"
11. There are plenty of clues in the relevant
Articles; the trouble is that they throw up some surprising, and
often inconsistent, results. Thus:
— defence investment is one obvious
possibility. A key criterion or commitment might be the readiness
to spend a minimum % of GDP on defence. Yet the latest compilation
of statistics released by the EDA, for 2005 (www.eda.europa.eu/documents.aspx),
reveals only 4 MS spending over 2%—Greece, France, UK and
Cyprus. 2006 data will show Bulgaria and Romania also scoring
high on this criterion.
— defence expenditure per capita of
population, by contrast, gives a top tier of France, UK, Sweden,
Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy.
— interpreting "investment"
as the proportion of defence expenditure going on equipment and
R&T (in the context of the general recognition that personnel
costs consume too much of the totality of defence spending in
Europe) gives Sweden, Greece, Finland, UK, Spain and France. Reformulating
this criterion as equipment and R&T spend per soldier would
introduce Netherlands and Germany into the top six, displacing
Sweden and Greece.
— the provision of usable forces is
another important criterion. But events have rather overtaken
the commitment to provide or contribute to a Battlegroup. All
MS with the sole exceptions of Denmark and Malta could now argue
that they qualify—and, though the size of any "core
group" is clearly wide open for debate (my use of "top
six" is purely for illustrative purposes), no one will argue
that 25 makes any sense.
— alternatively, one might envisage
a criterion reflecting the % of national armed forces deployed
on operations. Though some might argue for specification of ESDP
operations, Europeans contributing to the UN operation in South
Lebanon, like the British and Dutch in Afghanistan, would no doubt
urge that there should be no "flag discrimination'. On this
inclusive basis, the top performers turn out to include Ireland
and, in 2006, Estonia.
— PSC is also intended to recognise
and incentivise collaboration. Subscribers to permanent multinational
formations would no doubt wish to see criteria and/or commitments
in that area. In equipment collaboration, I understand that those
who spent in 2006 the highest % of their equipment budgets in
collaborations with other Europeans were predictably the six members
of the LoI Framework Agreement (France Germany, Italy, Spain,
Sweden, UK)—only with Sweden displaced by Luxembourg. Change
the criterion to absolute sums spent in European collaborations,
and it is Belgium which takes Sweden's place. Look at those who
spend the highest % of their R&T budgets in collaboration
with other Europeans, and though 4 of the LoI 6 are in the top
six, the UK and Germany are displaced by Hungary and Belgium.
12. To complete the sense of anomaly, nowhere
above do we find Poland—one of the most committed participants
in the EDA across the range of its activities, and widely recognised
as belonging in any short-list of "serious defence players"
in Europe. (Their relative lack of prominence in these statistics
suggests the need to further complicate matters by taking account
of purchasing power parity.)
13. I do not draw from the forgoing the conclusion
that identifying a relatively small core group of MS on the basis
of objective indicators is an impossible task. Rather, I conclude
that the process cannot be straightforwardly deductive; it will
have to be iterative, with the issues of how many and who both
illuminated by, and informing, the final determination of appropriate
criteria and commitments.
14. I also conclude, even more importantly,
that the 26 MS participating in ESDP are a heterogeneous bunch,
each with their own particular strengths and weaknesses, and with
a wide variety of national interests and priorities. This diversity
does not lend itself to any rigid or simplistic one-size-fits-all
approach and is, indeed, something to be exploited. Very few MS
have absolutely nothing to contribute to improving European defence
capabilities—PSC should be operated in a way which incentivises
as many as possible to raise their games if not across the board,
then at least in areas in which they feel most comfortable.
15. In short, the structure should incorporate
variable geometry. What is needed is not one but a range of core
groups, grouped around the various themes illustrated at para
11 above—increased investment, greater deployability and
more frequent deployment, more pooling of efforts and resources
in equipment procurement and in R&T, more role specialisation
and multinational formations, greater commonality in training
and logistics, etc. The headline PSC group, corresponding to the
Treaty's provisions, should sit at the centre of these various
satellite groups, where they overlap—with its membership
formally derived from a basket of the most significant criteria
and commitments operated within the various sub-groups. Thus an
MS such as the UK, with its outstanding record on investment and
"usability" of its armed forces, could qualify for the
core PSC group without having to do more on multinational formations
than it wished to—but, equally, without the value of that
form of collaboration being denied for those for whom it makes
sense.
16. Not coincidentally, there is a parallel
here with how the EDA structures its business. The Agency's Steering
Board meets in different formations: most significantly, that
of Defence Ministers, but also as National Armament Directors,
Capability Directors, or R&T Directors. Creation of the sort
of hierarchy of groupings suggested above would provide a recognised
structure of core groups of properly committed MS who could work
with the Agency in setting agendas and launching initiatives across
the range of the EDA's responsibilities—with the PSC core
group concentrating on the strategic issues typically reserved
for Ministerial Steering Boards.
17. In this way, PSC could be harnessed to overcoming
the current deficit of committed MS input into the Agency's business;
MS would have a real motive—privileged influence over EDA
business—to participate in PSC (and live up to the criteria
and commitments agreed); and this important innovation in the
Reform Treaty could be expected to achieve its underlying objective—contributing
centrally to better defence performance in Europe.
17 December 2007
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