CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN REFORM
briefing note
EU DEFENCE TAKES A STEP FORWARD By Charles Grant
The deal struck between Britain, France and Germany on the future of European defence is good news for those who believe that the EU should focus more on military capabilities than institutions. Now that the three have agreed to set up an EU military planning cell – an item which will make very little difference in the real world, despite the highly-charged negotiations surrounding it – the EU can move ahead with what matters. And that is not only boosting Europe’s military capabilities, but also preparing to take over NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. The agreement on military planning is one fruit of the increasingly close co-operation on foreign and defence policy between London, Paris and Berlin. Yet it is only six months since France and Germany, together with Belgium and Luxembourg, produced plans for a ‘core Europe’ defence organisation that excluded Britain. That scheme deepened the divisions caused by the Iraq war and convinced many Americans that France and Germany were determined to undermine NATO. Emotions have subsided since the spring. President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder have abandoned their plans for a defence core. They now believe that European foreign and defence policies cannot take shape without the UK. For the sake of an agreement with the British they have diluted their original plan for a military headquarters that could run an EU operation. Instead a small unit of operational planners will join the existing EU military staff, as part of the Council of Ministers secretariat. Tony Blair, too, has had to compromise, by accepting the principle that the EU may need to do its own operational planning, and by agreeing that this unit may one day evolve into a real headquarters – if everybody agrees that it should do so. But in return France and Germany have agreed to change two contentious parts of the EU draft constitution: the article committing members to defend each other if attacked will be greatly watered down, while that allowing a group of countries to move ahead with a defence avant-garde has been revised so that it is focused on military capabilities. More importantly, Blair has reasserted British leadership in European defence, one of the few areas where Britain is well qualified to set the EU’s agenda. Following the Iraq war, Blair had a credibility problem in some parts of Europe, being seen as President George Bush’s lackey. His new commitment to EU defence will help to dispel that image and restore British influence in the EU. Initial reactions in Washington have not been favourable. Since Blair came up with the idea of an EU role in defence, five years ago, he has often had to expend energy on persuading first President Clinton, and then President Bush, that European defence would not damage NATO. This time Blair will find the task more difficult, for Washington has become increasingly hostile to giving the EU a role in defence. That is a consequence of the rampant Francophobia that is particularly strong in the Pentagon, where European defence is seen – wrongly – as a French invention.
The gang of four The summit on April 29th of the leaders of Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg did a great deal to sour opinion in Washington. The four leaders agreed to co-operate more closely on defence matters in seven ways.