Modern Armed Forces for Europe
Fundamental rights are essential for military personnel
The human factor in missions abroad by Hartmut Bühl, Brussels The “European – Security and Defence Union” magazine, in addition to addressing the grand political concepts and strategies for the security and defence of the European continent, also looks regularly at the situation of the men and women sent by their countries on civil and military crisis-management missions abroad. They work and fight as part of joint multinational headquarters or task forces, or are deployed on national operations. All of them put their lives on the line. Only now is there a dawning realisation of the psychological and social consequences for the people concerned. But this is not the case in all countries. In order to gain, as far as possible, a Europe-wide perspective on some of the problems, I visited EUROMIL President, Emmanuel Jacob, at his Brussels office. I wanted to ask him whether EUROMIL is making any progress with respect to its call for the freedom of association laid down in Article 12 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and about the human factor during operations, all of this in the light of the budgetary restrictions affecting the armed forces of practically all EU member states.
Associations are often still seen as undesirable President Jacob did not see why freedom of association should be negatively affected by the current financial crisis, which he thought should, on the contrary, have a federating effect. He underlined that, unfortunately, over half of European countries’ armed forces personnel still do not enjoy the right to set up and join associations: in some EU countries, the chairmen of military associations are even prosecuted for denouncing certain social or economic conditions, which constitutes a clear discrimination against EU citizens. He put EUROMIL’s limited progress in this area down to cultur-
al or traditional factors in many nations’ armed forces, whose first contact with modern human resources management methods of the kind applied within the armed forces of northern European countries often takes place within multinational headquarters.
The counteracting forces of military culture “Some nations have come to the conclusion that this idea of the soldier as a social being does not fit into their particular organisational structures, which are not at all geared to participative forms of cooperation. So their first reaction is to go on the defensive”. He considers that the main reason for this is in many cases their particular conception of the soldier’s duty of absolute obedience, and their firm belief that no-one can take care of the interests of military personnel better than their own hierarchy.
New challenges for the associations and EUROMIL At present the main challenge to be tackled is the negative impact of the economic and financial crisis on defence budgets. Emanuel Jacob firmly believes that the resulting cutbacks in national defence spending and in the numerical strength of armed forces have created new challenges for the national associations and for EUROMIL. He argued: “Soldiers pay for the crisis twice. Firstly, we pay our share in the form of new taxes, income reductions, cuts in our national social security systems and other government measures resulting from the crisis. Secondly, as soldiers, we again pay the price of reductions in our defence budgets!” In answer to my question as to who and what precisely is affected, Mr Jacob was categorical: “When governments decide to make budget cuts, there is not an infinite number of
Military and political personnel demonstrate in favour of freedom of association.
Source: EUROMIL
39
