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The Politico- Military Organization of the European Union

The Political-Military Structures of the EU by Christoph Raab, Managing Director, COPURA GmbH

When Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac met in December 1998 in St. Malo and formulated that “the [European] Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military for - ces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises”, it was an idea whose time had simply come. The very beginnings: The UK’s strategic turn around It was in fact, a revolution in the British approach to Europe, where for over four decades it was a cornerstone of British politics to limit defence exclusively to NATO. During the Cold War, Europe was to a large degree free-riding on the United States guaranteeing Western Europe’s security. But there was also an element of free-riding by Western Europe on the Soviet Union to contain US power: The last few years have given a glimpse of what can happen if there is only one superpower left. There is a whole mix of motivations why the EU created first the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and subsequently the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), NATO searching for a raison d’etre, EU Member States that want to keep on relying on the US for their security and other Member States searching for the right institutions to promote their goals. It all led to an unlikely and somewhat awkward alliance of those who wanted to answer the American call for more defence contribution by Europe and those, uneasy with the US dominating global affairs after 1989, who saw an opportunity for the hour of Europe. The blueprint for European integration also in security and defence was there and by late 1998, the UK saw an interest in going down that road or else, the United States would loose interest in NATO. First steps in ESDP However, it took another major event to really kick-start Euro - pean Security and Defence Policy, the Kosovo war. It was argu - ab ly Tony Blair who in the days and weeks before the war had the clearest idea of how much was at stake for many governments in Europe. But by the end of the war in June 1999, it was clear to all European leaders that there was no alternative to the creation of an ESDP. Major decisions were prepared at the European Council in Cologne in June 1999 and taken in Helsinki half a year later: The EU copied to a large extent NATO’s military structures and adjusted them to its own specific needs by creating the Polit ical and Security Committee (PSC), a military committee, a military staff, a Joint Situation Centre and other support and advise structures. In those days, “lightspeed” was a term often used to describe the stunning ease and swiftness with which the EU set up structures in ESDP. The Helsinki summit also saw the adoption of the so-called “Helsinki Headline Goal”, the EU’s commitment to have a deployment capacity by 2003 of 60000 soldiers within 2 months for up to one year outside of Europe. For the next few years, the EU had a new policy area which was buzzing with task forces and people building structures and procedures, often from scratch. However, trust is a hardearned value and critiques kept on wandering if ESDP wasn’t more about symbols than about substance. At the European Council in Laeken 2001, the EU declared its provisional operational readiness in ESDP. 16 months after, the EU would start its first, if not so military, ESDP police mission in BosniaHerzegovina – the EU’s first steps in security and defence deployment were very careful. How ESDP works Over the years, the EU has built up an elaborated decisionmaking system in ESDP. The heads of State and government, coming together in the European Council twice per year, decide about the principles and political guidelines for ESDP. The foreign ministers, meeting in the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) decide about the actual policy-making in this area. These decisions are based on deliberations going on very regularly in the PSC and are prepared by the Committe of Permanent Reprensatives EUFOR – Soldier with EU-Flag in Chad

(COREPER). The PSC is composed of Member States’ representatives at ambassador level who take political responsibility for any ESDP mission once the GAERC has mandated the mission. The PSC gets military and strategic advice from the EU Milita ry Committee, the Committee for civilian aspects of crisis management (CIVCOM) and further working groups. Closely connected to that, but almost with a parallel structure, the High Representative of the CFSP and Secretary General of the Council Secretariat, Javier Solana is the face of ESDP. For all practical pur po ses, the High Representative has, in his 9 years of office, become a foreign minister of the EU, but not the foreign minister. If the EU has a united position, he brings a lot of weight to the negotiation table, but he has to work alongside other, national foreign ministers that jealously watch his actions. By 2004, stemming from the deliberations within the European Convention, the EU had also set up the European Defence Agency (EDA) in which most, but not all EU Member States participate. The political consensus behind the creation of this institution was that more coherent proceedings in technology development and defence procurement are necessary. However, the EDA’s record is scratched by the fact that national defence procurement is not only about getting the highest value for money and that many other considerations play a role which prevent a more efficient Europe-wide organised defence research and procurement scheme. The “Code of Con - duct” on defence procurement constitutes really the smallest common denominator between the EU Member States. The EU defence ministers do not meet in a formal minister council, but meet twice per year as the Steering Board of the European Defence Agency and also informally under the GAERC.

The role of European Parliament Even if ESDP is a Council competence, the European Commission and the European Parliament play a role in it, too. The Com mission sends a representative from DG Relex into the PSC. It seems that this has led to rather well functioning coor - dination of Council and Commission action around ESDP policies and missions. The European Parliament’s main role consists in its budgetary power as the CFSP budget is part of the overall EU budget which is decided by the Council and the European Parliament. The Parliament’s power is however limited by two facts. One, CFSP expenditures are considered “non-mandatory” which at the end of the day means that the Council really has the last word and the parliament decides about the global sum but not about the individual line items of the CFSP budget. Still, the threat not to pass the global budget during the overall budget negotiations, has granted Parliament a number of additional rights over the last ten years. The budget has been increased

Christoph Raab, Mr. Raab has received his degree in Economics at the University of Trier. He holds a Master’s degree from the College of Europe (Natolin) and is a trai - ned journalist. He has worked on behalf of the Ger - man government on several media projects in Po - land. From 2002 to 2005, Mr. Raab was Personal Assistant to Dr. Karl von Wogau MEP, in the European Parliament. In this period, he was closely involved with the growing number of EU activities in the field of security and defence. In November 2005, he founded the company COPURA, and has since been its Managing Director. Mr. Raab was born on 18 March 1974 in Karlsruhe. He is married and has a daughter.

substantially under the Financial Perspective 2007-2013 from around 100 Mio. Euro per year to around 250 Mio. Euro per year. The cost of specific ESDP mission are not part of the CFSP budget. They follow the principle “cost lie where they fall” and Member Sta tes contribute on the basis of the Athena mechanism, established in 2004.

2003: The EU embarking on a first mission The feelings about ESDP were often very mixed, with things evolving very fast from one point of view and very slowly from another. It took almost four and a half years from St. Malo before troops were sent out for the first time under the EU flag. And then it wasn’t so much troops as policemen. Overall, developments, actions and speeches between 1999 and 2003 fostered the impression that ESDP was more a project to create political will rather than military capacity. On January 1, 2003, the EU undertook its first official mission, the EU police mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since then, more then 20 missions have followed. Their purely military relevance was for the most part minor. The importance was to show that the EU was ready to take on the responsibility to stabilise its neighbourhood. The idea was to build up credibility and trust in ESDP step by step abroad and at home. Also, to avoid at any point an “overstretch” of the political consensus standing be hind ESDP. By all practical purposes that meant avoiding failure and casualties. In 2003, the EU undertook another mission to protect refugee camps in the Kongo. Most of the missions to date have focused on the Balkans, the European neighbourhood and Africa. For its ESDP missions, the EU has set up with NATO the socalled “Berlin Plus” 2 agreement which consisted in an exchange of letters between the NATO Secretary General and the High Representative in 2003. It allows the EU to use NATO’s planning and command capacities for its missions. Since then, there is also an agreed mode how to choose under which flag and through which headquarter a specific operation is conducted: The first frame of reference would be NATO. If NATO, i.e.,

66 the United States, would not be interested in a mission, the EU can use the capacities in SHAPE. The EU can also use one of several national headquarters able to handle an ESDP mission. Only after eliminating all of those options could the EU use the so-called operation centre in Brussels as the headquarter of a mission. During the Iraq crisis in 2003, the idea of a “European headquarter” was a key divider between the EU Member States and created heated debates. The atmosphere at the time was arguably best caught in the noise surrounding the so-called “Praliné summit” of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg in April 2003 which called for the creation of such a European headquarter.

5. Behind the scenes of ESDP In the early days of ESDP, the discussion about its setup was much inspired by the Maastricht debate on the Euro. The question was whether the EU would need a similar catalogue of criteria to create a credible ESDP. Meanwhile, time has shown that ESDP turns out to be a much too sensitive policy area for that and that Member States prefer discretion over rules and keep the reins safely in their hands. The big question in those early and dynamic days was, is it just institutionbuilding and creating new interesting positions? Was it just much ado about nothing or would Europe get serious as it did with the Euro and make another leap forward in European inte - gration? It was against this background that Javier Solana star - ted a tough job when he lent his face to CFSP and therefore also to ESDP in 1999. Since then, he hasn’t only lent his face, but also his own credibility and trustworthiness to ESDP. At the end of the day, Javier Solana is “Mister ESDP” and the EU’s interface to the world. Another important aspect of ESDP is this – new policies need symbols: So, each carefully planned mission that the EU started since 2003 was accompanied by a lot of political noise to get the maximum political benefit and create, step by step, a credible ESDP. For any mission to be mandated success was a must, failure not even an option.

Legitimacy: EP versus WELL-Assembly Lately, with the Chad mission and the observer mission in Georgia, the EU is taking on significantly higher risks in its missions. Since ESDP is for the most part a Council competence, oversight of its policies and actions should be handled by national parliaments. However, all too often, national parliamentarians lack the background and the specific information to effectively oversee what their government decides in Brussels at the Council table. So, it needs in addition supranational institutions to guarantee the democratic control and the accountability of ESDP. Here is a competition between the European Parliament on the one hand and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Western European Union (WEU) on the other. The advantage of the WEU Assembly is that it is composed of on average better known, national parliamentarians and it has a strong secretariat with a high capacity of research and analysis. On the other hand, ever since the integration of major parts of the WEU into the EU in the 1990s, the WEU is all but politically dead. The European Parliament on the other side is steadily growing in importance, however its legitimacy is limited by the low turnout of European elections and its members tend to be less known in the Member States which also means that their judgment is not introduced into the public sphere as effectively as the opinions of national parliamentarians. The EU and the global geopolitical situation have significantly changed since the EU decided to endow itself with an ESDP. Has it been a success? There are short-term and longer-term aspects to that question. The EU has created significant decision-making and military and civil deployment capabilities within 10 years. More importantly, it has created a political consensus, almost like an ESDP acquis.

Documentation

In December 2002 the European Council decided in Nice to establish permanent political and military structures:

The Political and Security Committee (PSC) meets at the ambassadorial level as a preparatory body for the Council of the EU. The PSC is keeping track of the international situation, and helping to define policies within the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) including the ESDP. It prepares a coherent EU response to a crisis and exercises its political control and strategic direction.

The European Union Military Committee (EUMC) provides the PSC with advice and recommendations on all military matters within the EU. It is the highest military body set up within the Council. The EUMC is composed of the Chiefs of Defence of the Member States, who are regularly represented by their permanent military representatives. The PSC is also advised by a Committee for Civi - lian Aspects of Crisis Management (CIVCOM) that provides information, drafts recommendations, and gives its opinion to the PSC on civilian aspects of crisis management.

The European Union Military Staff (EUMS) is composed of military and civilian experts seconded to the Council Secretariat by the Member States.

The Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC), which is part of the Council Secretariat, is the permanent structure responsible for an autonomous operational conduct of civilian ESDP operations. Under the political control and strategic direction of the Poli - tical and Security Committee and the overall authority of the High Representative, the CPCC ensures the effective planning and conduct of civilian ESDP crisis management operations, as well as the proper implementation of all mission-related tasks.

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