By Nicola Smith - 11th December 2003
Outgoing NATO chief George Robertson has warned that “a Euro-drama” should not be turned into “an Atlantic crisis” in the continuing debate over EU relations with the Alliance.
“NATO and the EU both have more than enough to do without a new round of theological nitpicking,” he said in his last public address before the end of his mandate next week.
Speaking to Brussels think tank, the European Policy Centre, he said he had been “reassured by the commitments to a strong Atlantic alliance, and to complementarity between NATO and the EU, being made on all sides of the debate.”
“Not least because governments know that genuine institutional duplication and competition would cost much more to produce much less,” he continued.
By the end of this week we expect to have an arrangement that is satisfactory to both sides of the Atlantic, he predicted.
The EU’s defence policy will feature highly on the agenda as European leaders meet this weekend for crunch talks on Europe’s draft constitution.
The leaders are expected to sign up to a proposal on “structured cooperation” which would allow certain member states to take the lead in pushing forward European defence.
Agreement on a mutual defence pact also appears to be on the way following reassurances to the EU’s four neutral countries that their constitutional obligations will not be breached.
A separate decision on planning capabilities for future EU military operations is also imminent.
An Anglo-French-German compromise currently on the table would see a small operational planning cell in Brussels for EU missions conducted independently of NATO.
However, the majority of staff would be based at NATO’s military HQ, known as SHAPE, located in southern Belgium.
The US has moved from open hostility to initial plans to set up a separate EU military planning HQ to a wariness that European defence projects could duplicate NATO structures.
Under the so-called Berlin Plus arrangements, the EU can currently take advantage of NATO assets for its own missions.
US officials have expressed their willingness to consider the latest EU ideas.
Within NATO circles there have also been recent signs of a softening on the issue of planning facilities.
Admiral Rainer Feist, the highest ranking European officer at NATO’s military headquarters on Wednesday backed a plan for the EU to have permanent staff at the alliance’s Belgian command centre, SHAPE.
Robertson insisted on Thursday that he welcomed a stronger European security and defence role.
This would include “the ability to conduct autonomous EU missions where NATO decides to stand aside and the arcane but essential Berlin Plus arrangements prove inappropriate,” he said.
But, on the eve of the EU’s enlargement to 25 nations, he urged Europe to “raise its game” when it came to defence capabilities.
By next May the EU would account for one third of the world’s GDP, bringing it to the level of the United States, he countered.
The combination of the two blocs must be “sufficiently robust” in terms of global defence, Robertson stressed.
“We need more capabilities, not paper armies and wiring diagrams connected neither to soldiers nor to reality.”
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