Defence: EU Parliament goes on nibbling at EU Council freedom of action

One of my main references, Nicolas Gros-Verheyde, published on 17th June a post titled: “demands The Parliament some transparency for EU “Defence” budget. Supported by a resolution voted by the Parliament, his post illustrates the fact that the EU Parliament has not renounced to extend its power and not to forget the smallest piece of its prerogatives to the Council. Or at least what it has assessed to be its prerogatives.

Indeed, scrutiny of the External Action Service is a major issue when dealing with the EU Parliament, as the Lisbon Treaty reminds us that Defence is first of all a national issue. This is completely true, at least for the time being. As stated in the Treaty, more precisely in protocol N°10, “the common security and defence policy of the Union does not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States”. This means clearly that the Nations still decide on their defence policy, which is a normal thing. Currently, they still vote the defence budgets and the national political leaders decide to what operations they are willing to take part and in what extend, with what caveats they will.

However, the same countries, grumbling against the fact that they always are the same ones to contribute to the operations, or that they are the only ones to take risks, would greatly appreciate a fair burden sharing. However their way to see how to ideally share the burden is very simple, and in a way very sound (from the Nations point of view): the EU pays and the countries implement the policy.

However, fed up by the principle of “the cost lie where they fall”, Nations, requested or accepted (I do not know) the Athena mechanism, which consists in providing some EU founds to support the operation and therefore alleviate the burden. This Athena mechanism is a very convenient Trojan horse of the Parliament to scrutinize the defence spending of the Council, as it illustrates the contradiction of the Nations. If they do not want to be controlled on the operations, the best is to renounce to any European money, but nobody really wants to.

Furthermore, as reminded by the author, the Parliament would like to scrutinize the EU Military Staff and other structures, but only from a very limited perspective: if the money is properly spent. Would the European Parliament have requested for more info on the operational side of their work, they would have gone too far and weakened their position. However, by looking at the budget, they use the back door to get into European Defence. A closer scrutiny of the spending, especially in the middle of the current budgetary crisis, can only be understood by the citizens of the virtue of the Members of the Parliament, at least as far as the Europeans are really interested in such issues.

Therefore as it has always been the case, the Parliament gets into things by nibbling new prerogatives, making use of its disturbance power to make the others bend and accept a reinforcement of its role. By the way, this resolution was passed by a majority of 607 votes, with only 54 against and 15 abstentions. Obviously the Parliament need for transparency supersedes national considerations of the Members on European Defence.

Eurocorps: avant-garde of a European army?

After a post on Mr Westerwelle’s statement on a European Army, I think interesting to have a quick look on Eurocorps.

I will not come back to the history of this headquarters and the debate over its military capabilities. The focus will be put on its political relevance.

A major issue of European Defence is its ability to remain as neutral as possible in the midst of the various and sometimes opposing national interests of European countries, that we face, even in the official statements on a common decision (you can refer to my precedent post on the WEU –ESDA). To come back to neutrality, I do not mean neutrality during an operation, or in other words passivity in front of the opposing parties. This neutrality is a positive one, which can be understood as objectivity of the action as for the national goals of the participating parties refers.

Indeed, most of the current so to say multinational units are in fact national units with an international flavour. All of them are designed to keep the capability to set up a purely national headquarters and to lead an operation, even if one or the other participating nation withdraws for an operation. For instance, at the ARRC (Allied Rapid Reaction Corps) the commander and the chief of staff will always remain British officers five of the eight branch chiefs are Brits, a sixth one being an American officer. In contrary, in Eurocorps, the responsibilities as well as the burden, is fully shared between France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg (in the order of the contribution) and very soon Poland.

In contrary, Eurocorps owns a unique structure in which the different nations are completely interwoven. You can see on Eurocorps website (here). This confidence mechanism prevents any single nation to confiscate the use of the force for its own purpose. One could say that such a system hinders dramatically the efficiency of a force a makes it unusable in real war. May be. However, I do not think if we really can choice. None of the European Nations is currently able to take the lead on behalf of the others. The example of the Napoleonic wars, where France owned the exclusive leadership within the ‘Grande Armée’, or the example of WWII, when the Wehrmacht was leading alone the units provided by their allies in the campaign against the Soviet Union is definitely over.

The cuts in Defence expenditures of our countries are a good illustration that the ‘Splendid isolation’ or the ‘Great nation’ syndromes should belong to the past. At least, this is the opinion of the European Parliament that our Nations (with the significant exception of Great Britain) claim to reinforce, by disbanding the WEU assembly. Mr Kuhne, then Member of the European Parliament (Germany- SPD), proposed in a resolution on ESDP, “to place Eurocorps as a standing force under EU command and invites all Member States to Contribute to it”.

This proposition was passed with a very large majority of 500 votes on 5^th June (here). This peculiar point on Eurocorps was not a matter of discussion. When referring to Mr Kuhne on the German position on this matter of a European army, at that time, Mr von Wogau (Germany- CDU) was the chairman of the subcommittee for Defence and Security.

Already at that time, German views on a potential European Army where not so much different than today.

Therefore I would say, may it please or not, at least in the minds of our German allies, there will be a European Army, and Eurocorps will play a role.

F.

PS: 13-02-24 : Link to a more recent article explaining why Eurocorps will not be committed in Mali

PS: this is the cover page of a book written by Mr Couraud, editor: Editions Hirlé.