Sarkozy’s defence plan set to reopen old wounds

Plans by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to give the EU its own military planning headquarters are set to reopen divisions with the UK and the US and rekindle fears that France wants the Union to rival NATO.

Sarkozy said that he wanted to give "new impetus" on European defence and that this would be a priority during France’s presidency of the EU in the second half of 2008. Jean-Pierre Jouyet, state secretary for European affairs, said in an interview with French newspaper La Croix last week (5 October that "what France wants is for Washington to recognise the need for a European defence pillar". He added that the US must accept that the EU has its own capability for planning and carrying out operations.

But the call for an independent EU planning headquarters distinct from NATO will worry the UK and risks reopening divisive debates.

In April 2003, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt hosted a summit with his French and German counterparts on boosting EU defence capabilities, including setting up an independent EU planning headquarters in Tervuren outside Brussels. But the plan was strongly opposed by the UK which feared that it would undermine NATO by setting up rival structures.

Nicholas Burns, US ambassador to NATO at the time, said that an independent EU planning capability was the "biggest threat to the alliance".

"This is guaranteed to stir up old passions," said Tomas Valasek, defence and foreign policy director at the Centre for European Reform in London. He said that Jouyet’s comments clarified what French foreign and defence ministry officials had been saying privately.

The UK argues strongly that the EU does not need its own operational headquarters (OHQ) as there are five national OHQs capable of planning military operations. France, Germany, the UK, Italy and Greece all have one and the EU is able to draw on NATO’s command structure SHAPE in Mons, Belgium. The EU’s two military operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo were managed from the French and German OHQs while the EU mission in Bosnia uses SHAPE. The forthcoming EU mission in Chad will be managed by the French headquarters in Mont Valérien near Paris.

As a compromise after the 2003 discussions, the EU created the operations centre within the Council of Ministers’ secretariat, which can set up a temporary operations headquarters but is limited to small missions.

Valasek said that the case for the EU to have its own operational HQ had not been made convincingly because there was no evidence that existing arrangements had not been robust enough to cope with the missions the EU has carried out.

By focusing on setting up an independent OHQ, Sarkozy also risks undermining his new commitment to work more constructively with NATO and eventually fully reintegrate into its command structures.

Valasek said that France would do better as a sign of good faith towards NATO to agree for the EU and NATO to start planning at an early stage before forces were deployed. This was essential, he said, because the lessons of recent conflicts had demonstrated the need for robust military force and a robust civilian operation. "Neither one of the two sides has what it takes to see operations through to the end," he said.

Plans by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to give the EU its own military planning headquarters are set to reopen divisions with the UK and the US and rekindle fears that France wants the Union to rival NATO.