The EU's Evolving Foreign Policy Dimension:
The Common European Security and Defense Policy
After Helsinki

Speech by the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, CH
Member of the European Commission, responsible for External Relations
At a joint meeting European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee
with Members of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
Brussels, 22 February 2000
 
(Source : European Union ; issued Feb. 23, 2000)
 
 
I am delighted to be invited to address this joint meeting, I greatly welcome the presence of Members of the Nato Parliamentary Assembly and, in particular, the Hon. Doug Bereuter who was a great friend to Hong Kong when I spent 5 years there as Governor.

The debate about the development of a Common Foreign and Security Policy in Europe has a number of curious features which perhaps deserve more attention than they get.

First, for years Europe has grown in economic clout and political self-confidence, but it has not matched these attributes with the ability to project a common foreign policy. We have talked a lot. We have issued communiqués replete with enough rhetoric to rattle the windows of chancelleries around the world. We have spent much more than anyone else on development assistance and humanitarian relief. We have been an important part of the defeat of the most awesome tyranny of the 20th century.

But our ambitions to do more together in foreign and security policy have outstripped our ability to deliver. Now we are proposing to change that by taking far bolder steps than would have been regarded as possible two or three years ago. And what public debate or public response do we see? Surprisingly little. Scepticism in some places. Hostility among a few in my own country, where it used to be the common currency of political debate that Europe should do more for itself. But by and large, interest is surprisingly slight.

Second, the debate seems to have been at its liveliest in Washington. For years, some American politicians have rightly urged Europe to do more for its own security, and more to protect democratic values internationally. Now we are responding to the challenge, perhaps occasionally to our own surprise, and - hey presto! - some of our American friends don't know whether to laugh or cry. How can we trust you to do more for yourselves, we are asked, when you haven't even managed to sort out the Balkans? How can you expect us to treat you seriously when you are cutting defence spending, and investing so much less in military technology than we do? Questions that challenge us. Questions that our friends are entitled to ask. Questions that Europeans must answer. And if I may be allowed to add this without seeming provocative, sometimes your own actions raise questions that we are entitled to ask as well.

But concentrate on our own affairs. What has transformed Europe's ambitions? Several things. The collapse of communism not only reminded us of the continental breadth of Europe but also perhaps challenged us to question whether we are living up to our destiny. Our very success in opening markets and increasing GDP made us realise that our unique union of sovereign powers must be about much more than those material things. But it was only really with the bloody disintegration of the Balkans that, baffled and a little humiliated, we were pushed into embracing our present ambitions.

It was the Balkan crisis that obliged us to engage more directly in conflict prevention and crisis management. And our first steps were frankly rather uncertain. The simple truth is that we have not been organised or equipped for this work. Even where Europe has been able to agree a common line, it has found it hard to deliver results effectively and on time.

The Treaty amendments agreed at Amsterdam in 1997 were a big step forward creating new instruments (such as Common Strategies), new ambitions, and an important new post, in the High Representative. The appointment of someone of the stature of Javier Solana to that post was an encouraging sign that the Member States meant business. The Commission, in its own restructuring, has shown that it, too, is determined to step up a gear or two, or three.

But the new cast, and the new Treaty possibilities, do not themselves carry us beyond the reactive and the declaratory.

The decisions taken last December in Helsinki, by contrast, were specific. Heads of Government set themselves the challenge of creating, within 3 years, a Rapid Reaction Force of 50-60,000 troops capable of being deployed within 60 days. That means real money, and real commitment. It means taking rotation into account, a commitment of some 200,000. Perhaps even more important than this headline goal, we are challenged by the new Secretary General of NATO and others to improve the quality of what we spend and do for our collective defence and quite right too. All this represents the beginning of a genuine European Security and Defence Policy.

We all agree, I hope, on two essential features of a credible and coherent foreign and security policy:

First, we require the capacity to exert influence, whether through diplomacy, aid programmes, trade measures or other means - including the provision of security assistance in crisis situations.

Second, we need both the political will and the practical ability to apply military force in the last resort, if other options fail.

If Europe's foreign policy incorporates these two features, we will be better able to promote our interests, to shoulder our responsibilities and to project our shared values in the international arena. When we can deliver outcomes fast and efficiently and when we have developed the capacity to back our policies with military action where this is necessary we will have come of age.

Some commentators have portrayed these developments as a threat to NATO and to the Transatlantic relationship. I do not as both a committed European and a committed Atlantist accept that. We are seeking to strengthen the Trans-Atlantic relationship by being better and more dependable allies allies who can pack more of punch when is proves necessary. As Strobe Talbott, the US Deputy Secretary of State put it recently: We are not against it. We are not ambivalent. We are not anxious. We are for it. We want to see a Europe that can act effectively through the Alliance, or, if NATO is not engaged, on its own. Period. End debate." Would that it were the end of the debate! It is not, of course. But I hope that as the facts become better understood the doubters will shelve their anxieties although (as I shall concede) credibility really depends on we Europeans showing what we can achieve together.

What are the facts? The first point is that, frankly, Europe is failing to pull its weight in NATO. The statistics are telling. The European members of NATO spend around 60% of what the USA spends on defence, but our capacity to project military force is 10-15% of Washington's. With some 2 million in our military forces, we can scarcely deploy 2 percent of that number for the Kosovo operation. Three quarters of the aircraft, four fifths of the ordinance and most of the intelligence in the former Yugoslavia was provided by the US. That makes us weaker allies than we should be. We have to put these defects right.

The creation of our Rapid Reaction Force, with the necessary structures for decision making, management and co-operation with NATO and other partners, is a first and a substantive expression of that determination.

I do not pretend that the development of a serious European security capacity to be deployed in situations where NATO is not engaged is without difficulties. It raises well-known, and genuinely complex, issues. How can we take full account of the concerns of the non-EU NATO allies without prejudice to the Union's decision-making autonomy? What is the position of members of the EU who are not members of NATO? What exactly do we mean by having our own capacity, if we will continue to depend on NATO assets for much of what we do? How do we avoid duplication of military planning and operational capacity? Legitimate questions which we must be able to answer convincingly. But they are surely questions that are capable of resolution and we are in the process of addressing them now.

I do not want to go into the higher mathematics of consultation mechanisms, decision-making structures and so on. But I would like to nail one serious but spurious allegation. This is the charge that Europe, by seeking an autonomous capacity to launch military operations for intervention in crises "where NATO as a whole is not engaged", is seeking to rival NATO. Why else would it want a capacity to act alone? The answer is that in the post Cold War international environment, our transatlantic partners will not want to intervene in every regional crisis on the European continent. Nor do I blame them. This is our backyard, not theirs. The pity is that we haven't looked after it rather better.

So there will be occasions when we will agree within NATO that Europe should take the lead. Perhaps it is the phrase "European defence policy" which creates the confusion. But we do not seek to duplicate NATO's role. The core of NATO's function is collective defence. And nobody, I repeat NOBODY, is suggesting that this should become part of the EU mandate. We want to strengthen our contribution to NATO and to European security. As George Robertson put it the other week, "ESDI is not about Europe going it alone, but about Europe doing more."

The real danger for NATO is not that we might succeed, but that we might fall. Are the countries of Europe prepared to devote the means to match their ambitions? Ultimately that is the test by which ESDP will stand or fail. The Heads of Government, as I have said, have set themselves a stiff challenge. I have no doubt they intend to deliver on it. But they have to prove it. They have to convince their electorates as well, of course, as their Defence and Finance Ministers. If you aim for the stars, you can't afford to fall flat on your face. Fail in this task and who is going to believe that our next ambitious pledges about Europe's future are not so much hot air?

We, in the Commission, are determined to deliver our contribution to this new venture. This is on the non-military aspects of crisis management.

Alongside the military headline goals, the Helsinki European Council, also agreed to examine non-military crisis response tools both at Union and national level. The idea is to bring together and develop national and European capabilities, and to establish effective mechanisms for rapid co-ordination and deployment. We are talking here of such things as humanitarian aid, election monitoring, police deployment and training, border controls, institution-building, mine clearance, arms control and destruction, combating illicit trafficking, embargo enforcement and counter-terrorism.

These are all areas in which the European Commission is already engaged. But we do not yet co-ordinate effectively enough with the national capacities of our members. Our decision-making is too cumbersome for crisis situations. Our budgetary procedures are too inflexible. Even when we have decided to act, and found the money, we are far too slow to deliver.

This clearly happened in the autumn of 1993 with the joint action to provide support for the convoying of humanitarian aid in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Council spent four months discussing whether to cover the cost of the operation by the Community budget or on a shared national basis. In the meantime, winter ended as winter does, every year, with the population denied the reinforced humanitarian aid they should have received.

We simply must do better than that and I am determined that we shall. I am working on the creation of a Rapid Reaction Facility which will allow us to mobilise our resources within hours or days rather than weeks or months. This is essential not only for efficient EU action, but so that we can contribute effectively to organisations such as the UN or the OSCE, when they take the lead in a particular crisis.

I have also decided that, with the Member States, the EU should work up non-military headline goals, to match the military one the creation of the Rapid Reaction Force. We need to set ourselves a challenge, together with our Member States, to be able to project defined capacity of policing, mine-clearance, mediation, or whatever it might be within a specified period.

Conflict prevention removing the root causes of conflicts themselves - and conflict management are at the heart of the EU's and the Commission's Foreign and Security Policy agenda.

I know the Parliamentarians present in this room wish us well in our effort to establish civilian capabilities and to enhance our management capacity. The worst of all possible outcomes as I have said - would be one in which our rhetoric excited expectations that we failed to match. National Parliaments and this European Parliament will be vigilant in assessing whether we deliver on our promises. And rightly so.

In the ESDP we start from two assumptions. First, there will continue to be crises in or near to Europe that may require military action. It would be nice to imagine otherwise - nice but bruisingly unrealistic. Second, there will be a continuing need for fast and effective non-military flanking measures.

Member States have national policies and funding mechanisms. So does the EU as a whole. Our first challenge is to co-ordinate EU and Member State input. Mr Solana's team has done considerable work in this area already, by setting up the situation centre within the Policy Unit and beginning work on an inventory of national assets, which could be mobilised fast for crisis management.

Our second challenge is to create new mechanisms for rapid delivery of EU assets. We are creating a small Commission Crisis Centre as an operational interface with the Situation Centre in Mr Solana's Policy Unit. We want to make sure that we can draw fully on the wealth of competence and experience which exists within the many Community programmes managed by the Commission. We also want to be in a better position to support the mobilisation of expertise in the Member States. In a particular crisis situation, we cannot afford unnecessary delay or confusion. That is why, together with the Policy Unit, we must strive to ensure rapid mobilisation and effective co-ordination between the actions of Member States and the input of the Union as a whole.

In terms of the timetable, I hope to present our proposal for a Rapid Reaction Facility to the Council before the European Council in Lisbon next month. And I intend to come forward soon afterwards with suggestions for non-military headline goals. Meanwhile Javier Solana, the Portuguese Presidency and the Council are pressing ahead with the institutional structures we need. An interim Political and Security Committee and interim Military Body will start their work in only a few days time.

It is an exciting time to be working on these issues. There is so much to be done. I am proud to be involved in the work in the firm belief that what we are creating will be good for Europe, good for NATO and good for our most important alliance.

Mr Congressman, your country, with generosity and vision, helped to save freedom on our continent in the last half century. As is customary with friends, we sometimes appear to take one another for granted and for our part, we do not always show much gratitude for your help. But we are as mindful of our obligations as we are proud of our heritage. And now we want to be a stronger and more effective ally in return for all your bold help.

We are not motivated by vainglory. We are not embarked on an exercise in wind-baggery. We have seen where Europe has failed. We think it is our duty to do better. We intend to fulfil that duty.
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