Battle intensifies over WEU

Date: 08/05/1997

EUROPE'S defence arm - the Western European Union - will next week consider how it should respond to Union requests for military action, four years after the EU assumed the right to do so.

Foreign and defence ministers will try to determine the practical implications of a Maastricht Treaty article which established the first direct link between the two institutions in 1993.

But they are gearing up for a fight between those for and against a greater defence role for the EU.

Under the article, “the Union requests the WEU to elaborate and implement decisions and actions of the Union which have defence implications”, laying the foundations for a joint EU security policy.

But since the provision has only been invoked once - over the refugee crisis in Zaïre last year - administrators still have little idea how it should work in practice.

Even though the WEU did not, in the event, send troops into Zaïre, the use of the article provoked widespread confusion and demonstrated the need for clear operational guidelines.

Under a French proposal, the two bodies would grow far closer together in practice than at present.

Paris argues that the WEU and the Union should begin cooperating at an early stage during a crisis - perhaps with shared early-warning systems - and keep in close contact throughout any operation. If the EU decided that military action were needed, it would present the WEU with a set of objectives but leave it up to the defence body to decide how best to implement them.

While the WEU would assume political and military control, the Union would monitor progress closely and could ask the WEU to end an operation.

But the proposals remain highly controversial, with some member states fiercely opposed to closer ties between the institutions.

Although WEU ministers will avoid questions of institutional integration - under discussion at the EU's Intergovernmental Conference - at their meeting next Monday (12 May) in Paris, more reticent member states regard the French proposal as a clear step in that direction.

The UK and the neutral EU members are highly wary of Franco-German plans to integrate the WEU into the Union, perhaps within a decade, and may well refuse to agree to them.

While generally taking a more positive tone towards Europe, the UK's new Labour government has already indicated that it will oppose the integration of the WEU into the Union.

But unless something is done, say advocates of reform, the WEU will remain little more than an empty shell, limited to small-scale policing operation such as those in Bosnia or Albania.