The UK’s million-euro question

Sixteen minutes does not sound like a significant statistic, but it may be very useful in helping the UK and France out of their current spat over EU defence, which this time appears to be focused upon the 2009 budget of the European Defence Agency (EDA).

At a meeting of defence ministers last week, the UK achieved the stunning diplomatic feat of uniting nearly all other member states against it by refusing to agree to a rise in the 2009 budget of the EDA. This was apparently on a point of principle - yet most participants in the meeting were at a loss to understand the nature of the principle. After the meeting France’s Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie noted that "haggling over €1 million for an agency which will be decisive in providing us with the resources and research means to prepare the future EU defence...that appeared to me as a bit of a joke".

Whether a joke or a principle, it is apparently cheap: the proposed budget is €29m, while the UK will agree to only €28m. One million euro, within the broad perspective of EU budgets, and even more so within the perspective of defence budgets, is negligible. In conversation, a senior UK civil servant calculated unofficially - on the back of an envelope - that it would take the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) all of 16 minutes to spend €1m: it is that negligible.

If the principle is unclear, it is worth speculating on the more common UK-France mode of tit-for-tat: France is dragging its feet on allowing the EU to take up a police training mission in Afghanistan, where the UK is mired with its NATO commitment. Possibly by chance, on the very same day that the UK refused to approve the EDA budget at the defence ministers’ meeting, France refused to approve a broad EU police fact-finding mission to Afghanistan in the foreign ministers’ meeting.

And so the interests of the UK taxpayer - and ultimately the EU taxpayer - are confounded by the temper tantrum of its government. The wider interests of the EU, both in its own security and in its ability to project itself around the world, are hampered yet again by the petulance of the French government. The situation is so absurd as to be funny - if it were not so serious.

The EU needs the UK to be committed to European defence: together with France it has the only military structure of size and competence capable of giving credence to a broader endeavour. Equally, however, the UK should realise that it needs the EU for its own defence. It may wish to have a special or strategic relationship with the US, whatever that may mean, but it has no option other than to be part of Europe’s strategic arrangements.

Historically, Britain’s strategy was to divide and rule within Europe while keeping neutral its closest shores in the Low Countries. But with the EU the continent is as one, leaving the UK the choice of fighting it, disarming in the face of it, or else joining it and ruling from within. Over the latter years conventional wisdom suggested it had chosen the latter path - but its recent behaviour appears somewhat to the contrary. Yet once again, it is behaviour it cannot really afford, as some UK officials now suggest unofficially.

The UK needs to climb down from the tree it has chased itself up. This will probably happen over time, but if a speedy and cheap route is needed, assistance may be at hand: simply suspend all activity in the UK MoD for 16 minutes and put the saved €1m towards the EDA 2009 budget. Who knows, in mid applause the French may even find themselves agreeing to an EU police mission in Afghanistan.

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

Sixteen minutes does not sound like a significant statistic, but it may be very useful in helping the UK and France out of their current spat over EU defence, which this time appears to be focused upon the 2009 budget of the European Defence Agency (EDA).