A love that dare not speak its name

The conclusion of the lengthy negotiations on a new treaty is meant to bring to an end a period of introversion in the EU. Apparently now that all is harmonious and agreed within the Union, it is time to start a similar process outside it. This sentiment has much to be admired, but perhaps should be confined in the first instance to Brussels. To be precise, to a rather shabby collection of buildings on Boulevard Leopold III in Evere, home of NATO.

It is impossible to exaggerate the lack of a substantial relationship between the two main organisations of the transatlantic region, nor the dire consequences. The only formal links between the two are set-piece meetings between the NATO North Atlantic Council (NAC) and the EU Political and Security Committee (PSC). There are no other mechanisms for ongoing contact at the civilian and diplomatic level. On the military side, certain procedures have been put in place to allow for necessary interface, largely in times of crisis or deployment. All other liaison between the organisations is left to informal personal contacts and meetings.

This situation would be absurd and difficult in any event, but it is doubly so given that the membership of the two organisations overlaps to such a great extent. The absurdity is exacerbated by the arcane institutional structures in member states, in which one department of a foreign ministry deals with NATO and another deals with the EU. That these departments rarely have anything to do with each other within each state is then extrapolated onto the two organisations. But such institutional inefficiency can only be a very small part of the reason, since it fails to address the uncomfortable reality that in each organisation the other is more or less taboo. So the EU in NATO or NATO in the EU is somewhere close to the love that dare not speak its name.

A clear example of this was obvious in a presentation given in NATO this week by a senior official of a member state that is prominent in both organisations - in which the EU was not mentioned once, despite Afghanistan and especially Kosovo cropping up repeatedly. When questioned about this, the official ruefully noted not only that the omission was more or less de rigueur but that the absurdity was compounded in his particular case. Until he took up his appointment in NATO he had worked on the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and the European Security and Defence Policy in his home foreign ministry. Yet now, just a few months later, he had nothing at all to do with these issues, or indeed barely any contact with his colleagues in his country’s permanent representation to the EU, based a million miles away in the Schuman district of Brussels.

In a perfect world of peace, this could all be excused as childish institutional rivalry, in which NATO will not accept any competition for military capabilities and the EU member states will no longer accept US domination. But in a world in which Kosovo is teeming, Afghanistan is boiled over and Iraq is beyond help, it cannot be tolerated. These are not only areas of mutual worry and interest for both, but also areas that demand the combined expertise of both. For at base, while NATO has the military expertise, it has no civilian capabilities at all. And in Afghanistan, especially, the major arena of NATO activity, there is a conflict that cannot be fought with military means alone: it is a war among the people that demands every aspect of civilian intervention alongside force, which the alliance simply cannot supply. The EU can supply this need and has indeed so far poured many hundreds of millions of euros into civilian reconstruction - but without any co-ordination with NATO.

Apart from the inherent deficiencies of mechanisms and interest, this failure to co-ordinate also has a political reason: Turkey, a NATO member state, in its attempts to promote the interests of Turkish North Cyprus, objects to EU-NATO co-ordination so as to block the participation of Cyprus.

Turkey actually has a good point - since the EU effectively duped the northern Cypriots - but not in the current context: NATO and the EU are lumbering about Afghanistan separately trying to get the Afghans to make peace between themselves, when the two organisations barely speak to each other. Perhaps the new, outward-looking EU can suggest a meeting halfway…how about Place General Meiser?

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

The conclusion of the lengthy negotiations on a new treaty is meant to bring to an end a period of introversion in the EU. Apparently now that all is harmonious and agreed within the Union, it is time to start a similar process outside it. This sentiment has much to be admired, but perhaps should be confined in the first instance to Brussels. To be precise, to a rather shabby collection of buildings on Boulevard Leopold III in Evere, home of NATO.