54th Parliamentary Assembly of the Western European Union (WEU) – Presentation of the priorities of the French European Union presidency for Defence Europe – Speech by M. Jean-Pierre Jouyet, Minister of State responsible for European Affairs (excerpts)
Paris, 3 June 2008
(…) At a time when France has been holding the WEU presidency since the beginning of the year and is preparing to take on the European Union presidency, I would like to take advantage of your invitation to talk to you about France’s broad guidelines for revitalizing Defence Europe. (…)
The revitalization we are proposing is in line with a revamped political vision, based on the need for Defence Europe and NATO to complement each other and the prospect of a transformation of our relationship with NATO.
Against a background of an increasing number of crises and in the face of shared challenges, the European Union and NATO must today act together to ensure our common security, by mutually strengthening each another. It’s no longer a case of NATO or Defence Europe but NATO and Defence Europe.
Over the past ten years, important progress has been made:
the EU has acquired operational instruments for the ESDP; over 15 civilian and military operations of varying size have been carried out (in the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East and Asia),
but, today, the Europeans’ capabilities are not equal to the task of dealing with the current and future crises and threats and no longer reflect their economic and technological level of development. For evidence, you need only look at the difficulties we had in launching the EUFOR operation in Chad – admittedly, the largest operation ever conducted, but nevertheless with fewer than 4,000 troops (when the EU has nearly 500 million inhabitants).
Besides the lack of political will, the main cause is known: the fragmentation and inadequacy of defence spending in Europe (deficit of military capabilities).
So our objective for the French presidency will be to define the strategic vision which will enable us to remedy these shortfalls and set concrete goals for the next ten years.
II – Our ambition for the French presidency is to achieve progress on five major goals:
1) A security strategy updated for the next decade.
In 2003, the Europeans adopted a "European Security Strategy". This document set out the main threats and proposed a general policy guideline for the EU’s external action.
Our objective isn’t to go back over this document, but to update the common analysis of the threats so as to determine the appropriate defence capabilities and measures to strengthen security. The December 2007 European Council charged Mr Solana with the task and we hope to see its successful completion at this December’s European Council.
This isn’t a bureaucratic exercise, but an essential basis for all our work: without defining a common strategic vision, how can we answer the question: "military capabilities, to do what?
This updating is essential because since 2003:
the EU has gone from 15 to 27 members and is duty bound to have a strategy reflecting everyone’s vision;
the tensions aroused by the Iraq crisis are now in the past;
around fifteen military and civilian operations have been carried out under the ESDP from which we have to learn the lessons;
finally, the threats have evolved: they are more diffuse and embrace areas which until now we hadn’t included among security risks (migratory pressures, ecological risks, cyber crime, etc.)
2) Strengthen EU civilian and military crisis management capabilities
The European Union has to play a greater role in crisis management; this may be:
autonomously, as it is currently doing in Chad and the CAR;
with NATO assets, as is the case, for example, in Bosnia; or
in support of a NATO-led operation.
We must, however, be aware of our limits:
current security arrangements do not allow sufficient cooperation between the European Union and NATO;
the interoperability of our weapons systems is inadequate;
defence budgets are constrained everywhere in Europe at the very time when needs are growing.
How do we do it?
by adopting new methods to get better value for money: pooling between some States (joint development of capabilities; joint use of existing capabilities; pooling of certain tasks).
Concretely, we would like Europeans to agree on a series of key capability projects, of which the 27 would support the principle even if these were initiated by only a few countries. Examples:
In the air and at sea:
a European carrier-based task force, based on a British or French aircraft carrier;
a common fleet of A400-M planes, for example for strategic transport or in-flight refuelling;
In crisis management;
a capability for evacuating European nationals in situations like the one we experienced in Lebanon two years ago,
a demining capability.
By creating a genuine internal defence market:
we shall have to make an important effort for the defence industry: France shares the objective proclaimed by the Commission, i.e. to facilitate the circulation of defence-related products within the European Union in order to strengthen the Defence Industrial and Technological Base.
Our objective will be to reach a political agreement on the European Union’s "defence package", so that we can inject momentum into the European market by liberalizing defence procurement (adoption under our presidency of the defence procurement directive) and make headway on liberalizing the intra-Community circulation of defence-related products (draft directive).
Similarly, the European Defence Agency must be given a new boost through some key European programmes;
Finally, we have to think about how to fund ESDP operations through the "Athena" mechanism which is proving too restrictive to conduct ambitious operations.
We will be able to strengthen and mobilize capabilities that much better if the EU has more effective instruments at its disposal.
3) Develop the instruments of Defence Europe
The Lisbon Treaty includes the new possibility of permanent structured cooperation between 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".
This cannot in any case be implemented until after the Treaty has come into force in 2009. The presidency’s objective is to launch the debate in order to create the conditions for achieving a consensus on the principles for its implementation. We want to promote a broad, inclusive approach, creating momentum, taking forward as many Europeans as possible. A priori, no one must feel excluded.
For European operations, we want to make the European Union’s capacity for planning and carrying out civilian and military operations credible.
Since January 2007, there has been an "Operations Centre" in Brussels, whose capabilities are still embryonic and not permanent. Yet, judging by our experience of EU operations, such a capability is essential to enable the EU to carry out autonomous operations. Today, Member States have to use multinational operations centres (such as the Mont Valérien centre for EUFOR Chad).
Our aim is to strengthen the EU operations centre sufficiently to make its use a credible practical option. Here too, we wish to move forward pragmatically and not dogmatically.
We have to encourage officer training exchanges (military "ERASMUS"): to improve the European armed forces’ ability to work together, we will propose stepping up exchanges between defence colleges by forming a training network.
4) Partnerships to promote security:
The EU isn’t working alone. We would like to strengthen the European Union’s key partnerships, i.e.
the European Union-NATO partnership: 21 EU members out of 27 are also members of NATO;
partnerships with countries outside NATO which can and want to contribute to EU operations, including Russia, who is lending her support to the European Union in Chad. This will be a theme of the French presidency’s European Union/Russia summit;
the partnership with the African Union, to help Africa shoulder its responsibilities in crisis management.
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We are keen to trigger a fundamental movement towards revitalizing Defence Europe, which will continue beyond our presidency.
During our presidency, there are projects which, we hope, are going to be brought to a successful conclusion (e.g. the security strategy), projects under way to which we are going to give a political boost, and projects we are going to launch that will bear fruit only in several years’ time (i.e. military capabilities). (…)
To succeed in our task, we need the support of all our partners. The idea isn’t to impose a "programme", but to define together a common ambition for Europe. Everyone must carry this effort forward. The guidelines I have presented to you are there to launch the debate, so that together we can move towards a revitalization of Defence Europe./.