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Date: 16/11/00
- WESTERN European Union ministers agreed a series of measures to wind up the European military alliance and transfer many of its assets and responsibilities to the EU, which is hoping to have its own military capability ready from next year.
- IT was agreed that the alliance's military staff will stop work when Union governments indicate that their new security and defence committees are up and running, probably around the middle of next year. A number of WEU missions - primarily its role in demining efforts in Croatia - will continue until May 2001, when the WEU's mandate is due to expire, and the EU will take responsibility for a policing project in Albania. A rump WEU staff will be retained to fulfil the commitment to mutual defence under Article 5 of the alliance's founding treaty. The staff will also continue to deal with relations with the Paris-based WEU assembly. In addition, alliance personnel will provide administrative support for committees designed to improve cooperation on defence procurement such as the Western European Armaments Group.
- THE WEU is expected to transfer assets including its joint command unit and the institute for security studies to the Union in the near future, but no date has yet been fixed.
- MINISTERS also adopted a social plan to help WEU staff who will lose their jobs when the alliance's work is wound down. This provides for retraining and some compensation for the estimated 50 or so officials who will not find work in other institutions. Staff representatives demonstrated outside the minister's meeting in Marseille and called on WEU Secretary-General Javier Solana to do more to find jobs elsewhere for alliance employees. Solana is also head of the secretariat of the Council of Ministers.
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