Invent a successor to the Western European Union Assembly

On 15th June, Mr Robert Walter, Member of the British Parliament (Conservative) and President of the European Security and Defence Assembly (formerly known as WEU Assembly) pronounced a speech at the occasion of the 58th session of the assembly (here).

Despite the decision of Member countries to dissolve the WEU assembly, Mr Walter would like this forum to further exist, in order to preserve the capability of National Parliaments to scrutinize the now Common Security and Defence Policy. His views come not only from his intrinsic political opinions and orientations. Taking into account that CSDP is first of all an intergovernmental issue and the primary responsibility of the national parliaments is to control their governments, he has identified a potential crack in the European Defence architecture.

The European Council, controlled by the 27 governments may decide of an action and will subsequently express guidance to the relevant EU services to make it real. Then they will turn back to their national administrations to set up a force. I will focus on the military issue. The EEAS will have some limited responsibilities: in a military operation, most of the costs are charged against the participating countries. Regarding the unfolding of the operation, most of, if not all, the political risks will be taken over by the governments and their coalition in the respective national Parliaments.

The commitment of troops will remain anyway a national decision as the nations pay for their armed forces and nobody else, and as well, if the operation goes wrong, the government can loose the next election. In the current legal situation of the EU, such a political risk does not exist for the European Parliament.

However, a national decision to commit or not troops, to go or not to an operation, will never be a purely national decision. The participation will always be the result of a compromise, taking into account, of course, national considerations as well as international pressures, including influence from the European partners. As a consequence, one could legitimately accept that the Member of a national Parliament keeps in touch with colleagues from other parliaments to understand better their own perception of the operation, or any other topic to be debated in the European instances.

This way of doing is not redundant with the European Parliament tasks: the EP has no formal responsibility regarding the commitment of troops or defence equipment and budgets. May be the European Parliament owns larger prerogatives by civilian missions, but in no way by military ones. At least, not yet, except the Athena program, which represents only a fragment of the real cost of an operation.

As currently, European Defence is stuck in sand, Mr Walter’s initiative is not a comeback to previous situation. I would rather interpret it as a pragmatic approach of the current political situation of Europe, where many countries get back to purely national considerations when dealing with defence issues. My only hope is that Mr Walter’s stance will have only a tactical effect to set again in movement European defence and not a strategic one by redesigning European Defence for the 20 next years as a pure coalition of interests.

Common Security and Defence Policy: the Website

Today, thanks the WEU website I went to the EU council webpage on CSDP (former ESDP).
Even if it is the official voice of the EU, it is worth having a look at it.
You will get access by cliking here

Western European Union coming to its end. Was it really opportune?

On 31st March O. Kempf, wrote on his blog (here), that the WEU was coming to its end.

Of course, the author expressed his strong regrets and in his analysis assessed that this decision was not totally opportune.

I fully support his assessment, firstly because he is very competent in all geopolitical issues, secondly because the press statements of WEU member nations do not match.

As a first approach I do not see this as a major decision of our governments: most of the WEU had been already since a while handed over to the EU Council, as the Secretary General of the EU was double hatted SecGen of the WEU. Torrejon is the best example of this transfer of authority. The only remains of the WEU was the parliamentary assembly, renamed lately ESDA.

1. Statement of the French Government (here)

France and its partners have decided to withdraw from the WEU as a consequence of the Lisbon Treaty and the progress of the European construction, as the EU has taken over all the functions of WEU.

2. Statement of the German Government (here)

The German federal cabinet has decided to withdraw from the WEU. Continuing with the WEU would create duplication with the EU structures. Dissolving the WEU means that the place to discuss about European security is the EU.

3. Statement of the Spanish Government (here)

Firstly Spain speaks on behalf of all the contracting parties.

NATO and the Lisbon Treaty are the basis for collective defence. Spain will make sure that the discussions between the national Parliaments will go on, based on the protocol n°1 of the Lisbon Treaty.

I suppose that the Spanish Government refers to the article 9 (page 203 of the Lisbon Treaty).

4. Statement of the British Government (here)

The WEU role was essentially symbolic referring to collective defence. The current work of the parliamentary assembly is not the cost of 2 millions Euros a year for UK alone worth. And the most important: “Given the inter-governmental nature of CSDP, we believe, however, that this remains fundamentally a matter for national parliaments. There is no reason and no case for the European Parliament to expand its competence in this area”.

An easy conclusion is that Germany has a very federalist approach, while the UK relies on the inter-governmental relations, agreeing with Spain, only on the role of the NATO, while France and Germany simply ignore it.

Obviously the role of forum that the Parliamentary Assembly of the WEU was playing was not that stupid, as it could help our nations getting a common approach on defence matters. Indeed, for the time being, the European Parliament, in accordance with the Lisbon Treaty plays no role in the issue as Defence and its budgets (of course) remain purely in the national field of competence.

Therefore, I join O. Kempf: we know what we loose, not what we gain. Having met Robert Walter several times, I really think that he will strive maintaining an inter-governmental parliamentary structure. Isn’t he a UK –conservative member of the House of Commons? In any case, the UK will never (at least in the next decade) support the German federalist approach.