WEU bids for autonomy despite opposition

Date: 29/02/1996

By Elizabeth Wise

EVEN members of the Western European Union's (WEU) parliamentary assembly admit that the EU is not likely to take charge of its own defence in the near future, and member nations will not hand over their defence authority to any Union institution.

But the WEU is nevertheless fighting to gain the means to take military actions on its own.

At a meeting in London last weekend, the WEU assembly added to the flurry of discussion in the run-up to the Intergovernmental Conference with a debate on constructing Europe's future security architecture.

The meeting did not resolve the question of how closely the defence agency should be integrated into the EU, but parliamentarians from the WEU's 27 member, associate and observer countries did agree that the agency must move beyond the current restrictions that limit its tasks to peacekeeping and consultation.

The three options laid out so far for the WEU's legal status - to merge into a Union institution, to remain politically and legally subordinate to the EU, or to develop independently but as a partner in security questions - were described by defence committee chairman Jacques Baumel as “elegant ways of killing the WEU”.

In a report, he called on members to reject any plans to separate the agency from the Union, but he also advised against integrating the institution into the EU until all Union national governments agreed to the clause in the WEU treaty under which all affiliated countries would pledge to protect each other if attacked.

But WEU parliamentarians rejected Baumel's recommendation that membership be offered only to countries willing to participate in a common defence policy. Instead, they said, the EU should encourage new members to “participate in the establishment of the European defence structure”.

Baumel's report called on governments to put some teeth into the defence agency, giving it real capacity to conduct military operations, with a command structure linking Eurocorps and the numerous bilateral or multilateral ground, air and marine forces that already exist within the EU.

Acknowledging that the “only operational instrument for Europe's defence” is NATO, the assembly asked the alliance to complete plans this year to allow the WEU to use NATO logistical equipment for its own operations. It said Europe should be able to take its own initiatives independently of the transatlantic organisation, particularly in fields that may not interest the US.

Also still unresolved is the question of whether the agency should be able to initiate its own actions, or whether it must wait for a request from the EU.

Although the WEU has been invited to submit its own proposals to Union governments at the IGC, it will have a hard time making a recommendation with one voice, according to WEU political committee chairman Luis Maria de Puig.

In his report, de Puig said the assembly found itself “in a state of uncertainty, not to mention deadlock, as regards the stance the agency should take”.

Instead of prescribing the WEU's possible future status now and provoking discord amongst its members, de Puig recommended a more flexible approach in the organisation of security actions.

The agency's parliamentary assembly, with 108 members, meets in Paris twice a year, in addition to extraordinary sessions such as the weekend meeting in London.

WEU countries include the 15 EU states, (ten as full members and five as observers), Iceland, Norway and Turkey (as associate members) and the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia (as associate partners).