France, NATO and European defence By Tomas Valasek ★ France and the UK are close to an agreement that would dramatically improve relations between the EU and NATO. The two institutions currently make poor partners. Besides Franco-British disagreements, Turkish squabbles with the EU also impede EU-NATO co-operation. ★ France had long championed the EU over NATO for defence co-operation but President Nicolas Sarkozy has changed that. He has ordered his diplomats to stop obstructing NATO’s work and offered to return France to NATO’s military structures. ★ Britain should now respond to Sarkozy’s initiative by agreeing with France to strengthen the EU’s defence policy. And Turkey should be offered a bigger role in the EU’s security and defence policy. Together, these steps hold promise of much better EU-NATO ties. Soon after his election as French president, Nicolas Sarkozy signalled that he would like French officers to return to NATO’s military command. He also said that France should stop treating NATO as a ‘bogeyman’ and that it should ‘renovate’ its relationship with the alliance. In doing so, Sarkozy broke a long-standing taboo in French foreign policy, and opened the possibility of a dramatic improvement in EU-NATO co-operation. For much of his term in office Sarkozy’s predecessor, President Jacques Chirac, viewed relations between NATO and the European security and defence policy (ESDP) as essentially a zero-sum game: what was good for one was bad for the other, and vice versa. NATOESDP co-operation has, with few exceptions, been limited in recent years. While NATO and the EU talk on some issues, like Bosnia, they are not allowed to discuss other important ones, like their respective missions in Kosovo. Sarkozy’s words now suggest that the ruinous quarrel between Europe’s two main security organisations may be nearing an end. But for the new French president to prevail, a number of conditions must be met. France and Britain will need to reconcile their conflicting views on ESDP. The United States and Turkey will also need to respond with compromises of their own. This briefing note outlines what a possible future agreement among all parties could look like.
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The problems that will need to be overcome are real, but they are practical rather than philosophical. The significance of Sarkozy’s initiative is that for the first time in the brief history of ESDP, neither the US nor any European government is actively seeking to undermine either the EU or NATO. The United States, an original critic of ESDP, dropped its opposition long ago, and France, too, is now keen for NATO and the EU to co-operate.
Brothers in arms or brothers at war? NATO and the EU make very poor friends. Even though the membership of both institutions overlaps to a large degree (21 of the 27 EU member-states are also in NATO), the two barely talk. Worse, they compete for the member-states’ defence money, and for the attention of others. For example, in 2005 they could not agree on who should support the African Union’s mission in Sudan, so for several years each organisation ran its own operation there. Occasionally, the rivalry between the EU and NATO leads the member-states to sabotage much needed equipment purchases, like when France slowed down NATO’s plans to acquire a fleet of C-17 transport aircraft. This competition leaves everybody worse off. Memberstates divide their already scarce defence budgets between the EU and NATO. Both institutions have given their members a long ‘shopping list’ of new equipment
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