Solana hails new era for EU-NATO relations

Date: 19/12/02

By Karen Carstens

Thanks to a landmark deal clinched in Copenhagen and sealed this week in Brussels, the EU is about to embark on a new chapter in its history - deploying its own troops.

According to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the Union aims to beready to take over NATO's 450-strong "Amber Fox" peacekeeping operation in Macedonia by the end of February, and the United Nations will hand over its police mission in Bosnia to the EU in January.

More significantly, following a pledge by EU leaders at the Copenhagen summit, officials have indicated that the EU could inherit the 13,000-strong NATO-led mission in Bosnia by mid-2004.

"It's a political expression of the willingness to take over," one official said. "Right now it's only the start of a reflection on this, but the significant thing is that it's the first time they [the leaders] have actually said it." The reason this willingness to take over can now be translated into concrete action: European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) has risen like a Phoenix from the ashes after the 15-nation bloc signed a deal with NATO on Monday (16 December) that salvaged the "Berlin Plus" accord.

Based on an agreement reached in Berlin in 1999 on the finer points of EU-NATO relations, Berlin Plus had to be shelved for nearly three years because of objections from Turkey. It used its power of veto in NATO to block the agreement because of ongoing haggling with Greece, particularly over the future of Cyprus.

But pressure on Turkish leaders at Copenhagen, largely from Germany and France, helped persuade them to finally approve Berlin Plus. This means the EU will now have access to NATO planning facilities at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Belgium and military hardware for missions it wants to carry out independently.

"I am very pleased that we have agreed the EU-NATO framework for permanent relations," said Solana, who along with NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson presided over a meeting of the North Atlantic Council and the EU's political and security committee at NATO headquarters on Monday.

Solana heralded the start of a "strategic partnership that will bring our organisations closer together in a new era of cooperation".

Robertson hailed the agreement as "a milestone in the history of relations between NATO and the EU".

He said the North Atlantic Council had agreed to adopt a series of decisions aimed at supporting EU-led operations in which NATO is not engaged militarily.

"EU access to NATO planning capabilities able to contribute to military planning for EU-led operations is now assured, effective immediately," he said, adding that detailed arrangements for implementing each of the elements should be in place by 1 March.

The EU's 60,000-strong rapid reaction force - which has to be operational within 60 days and able to sustain itself in the field for more than a year - should also be fully up and running in 2003.

Turkey has received assurances that the new force would not intervene in any crisis related to Cyprus, and in a concession to Ankara, EU leaders agreed that Cyprus - due to join the Union in 2004 - would not take part in any EU military operation using NATO assets.

ESDP was launched in 1999 at the Helsinki summit, partly as a response to the Kosovo war, which underlined the EU's lack of military capabilities.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Brussels last Thursday, Robertson warned that few EU states had the high-tech capacities necessary "to prevail quickly and with minimum casualties". He said that the US was developing its capacities so quickly thata "capability gap and a thinking gap" threatens future transatlantic operations.

Thanks to a landmark deal clinched in Copenhagen and sealed in Brussels on 16 December 2002, the EU is about to embark on a new chapter in its history - deploying its own troops.