Sarkozy plots defence force with big EU states

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy plans to create an elite defence group of the EU’s six biggest member states once the Lisbon treaty comes into force next year.

The alliance of France, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland would pledge a minimum level of defence spending and promise to improve their military capabilities as well as work together on military co-operation projects including common defence equipment procurement and forming a 60,000- strong intervention force. They could also co-operate on military infrastructure projects including intelligence-gathering satellites and missile defence.

The plan is to launch the group next year once the Lisbon treaty has been ratified, using a provision for "permanent structured co-operation" in defence, which was originally agreed in 2004 as part of the EU constitution. Although the constitution was later rejected by referenda in the Netherlands and France, the clause that made this form of co-operation possible was kept in the Lisbon treaty.

The UK will not support the plan publicly until the new treaty comes into force, but an EU official confirmed that the UK had pushed for the provision when the constitution was being drafted. The possibility of forming a pioneer defence group had been included in the constitution because "the UK and France wanted it in", an EU official said, adding that the UK saw the initiative as "a way of leveraging extra [military] capabilities" from some member states.

Under the Lisbon treaty, membership of the group should be open to any country that meets the qualifying criteria.

German centre-right MEP Karl von Wogau, chairman of the European Parliament’s sub-committee on security and defence, said: "It would be better if there’s an openness to small- and medium-sized countries.

Sarkozy wants to boost European defence during his country’s presidency of the EU in the second half of this year and create what he describes as a "European pillar" within NATO. He is planning to use an offer to reintegrate France fully into NATO command in 2009 to leverage support from European allies for new initiatives on European defence. A key French aim is to set up a fully fledged EU planning cell.

The UK and France are also keen to mark the tenth anniversary of the St Malo declaration between the then French president Jacques Chirac and the UK prime minister Tony Blair, which launched a new era of defence co-operation, although the EU has since fallen short of some of its ambitions, including creating a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force. Sarkozy and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown are to discuss defence co-operation at the Anglo-French summit in London on 27-28 March.

French MP Pierre Lellouche, a spokesman on defence for French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, set out in Le Figaro an eight-point list of qualifying criteria for membership of the elite group. "Common defence will only progress around a hard core of reinforced co-operation, a G6 made up of the main nations," he said.

All countries taking part in the defence "hard core" would have to spend 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence and agree to form a common procurement market for defence equipment, according to Lellouche. The six would also provide 10,000 troops for a 60,000 strong intervention force, agree to ‘Europeanise’ their foreign military bases and launch common major defence infrastructure projects such as space and intelligence technology and missile defence. The group’s members would also set up civil protection programmes against terrorist attacks and agree a common disarmament policy including a European bank of fissile material to supply developing countries wishing to introduce nuclear power.

Of the six, only the UK and France already spend 2% of GDP on defence and the target would pose a tough challenge for Germany where defence spending was 1.32% of GDP in 2006 and Spain (1.18% in 2006).

Members of the group would also form a common defence equipment procurement market. Spain’s defence minister José Alonso last year called for an inner core to work on defence.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy plans to create an elite defence group of the EU’s six biggest member states once the Lisbon treaty comes into force in 2009.