EU and NATO clash over defence policy

By Dana Spinant

Date: 23/10/03

TALKS between EU and NATO diplomats have done little to defuse tensions - most acute in Washington - over plans by some member states to create an independent military capability for the Union.

Although Tuesday's meeting between EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana and political heads of the Alliance clarified the "misunderstandings between what the Europeans want to do and that the Americans think they want to do", they "still do not see eye to eye on this", one diplomat said.

Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg and one of the most ambitious supporters of a strong European defence policy, told European Voice "there is a certain immaturity in transatlantic relations" over the question.

George Robertson, the outgoing secretary-general of NATO, attacked the four countries leading the drive towards an independent military planning structure - France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, warning that Europe needs "more usable soldiers and fewer paper armies".

He dismissed their plans to create a separate European headquarters at Tervuren, near Brussels, and urged Belgium "to invest in usable capabilitie rather than wasting money duplicating expensive assets and headquarters which already exist in NATO".

His words were echoed by NATO's military commander, General James L. Jones, in a debate hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Brussels last Thursday. He warned that a separate structure would have a "deleterious" effect. Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to NATO, expressed a similar view, describing the plans as "a big threat".

At meetings of ambassadors this week, Burns sought reassurances from his European counterparts that the plans would not undermine the Alliance.

The other proposal that particularly irks the Pentagon is the possible introduction of a voluntary mutual defence clause in the draft European Union constitution.

Washington's impatience over this and the Tervuren issue turned to outright hostility, when UK premier Tony Blair apparently softened his opposition to the creation of a separate EU command headquarters during his meeting with Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac in Berlin last month.

However, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted on Monday that the UK government was against an EU military headquarters independent of NATO.

Although the four countries may drop the Tervuren plan for the moment, they are unlikely to abandon the proposed mutual defence clause, included in the draft constitution drawn up by the Convention on EU's future. Under this, EU countries would defend each other in the case of an external attack.

Jean-Claude Juncker said it would be unthinkable not to have such a clause in the treaty. "If one of the 25 EU states is attacked, do you really believe that the others will lounge around or go home to watch the evolution [of events] on television?" he told this paper.

"Do you believe that the ambition of solidarity, which must exist between the member states, will not make the others come to help the state which is under attack?

"Does somebody really believe that, if we don't introduce this clause in the treaty, the clause will not apply? It exists, whether we include it in the treaty or not.

"Politically, militarily, strategically, geographically, it [the mutual defence clause] exists. It is obvious," Juncker said