Brussels, 08/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - A day after the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said that a “horde of chickens” would be more effective than the EU in combat, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, with the backing of the European Commission, unveiled two reports on Friday 8 May, in an effort to provide “a new impetus to make Europe a stronger security and defence actor”.
These two reports were sent to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. They provide a scoreboard of the progress achieved since the European Council of December 2013 (see EUROPE 10989) and put forward a number of ideas to be followed. The first looks at the perspective of the defence market, industrial policy and research. The second focuses on the EU's activities in the security and defence field and developments in Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). These two reports, together with the joint communication on enhancing security and defence capability in non-EU countries (see EUROPE 11304), constitute the overall contribution to the conclusions for the Foreign Affairs and Defence Council on 18 May, in view of the European Council at the end of June.
The first report was drafted by the High Representative (also as Head of the European Defence Agency) and tackles the many different challenges. It reveals that “little progress has been achieved”. It therefore proposes to facilitate the use of EU tactical groups (a military force that is ready for deployment and ensured by several member states in turn). This has existed for a long time but the soldiers involved in this tactical group have never been sent to a theatre of operations. In this context, the report constitutes a major step forward by proposing to improve the use of the potential existing in the Lisbon Treaty by way of implementing Article 44, which provides the possibility of a number of member states conducting a military operation on behalf of the EU. The report also proposes to go beyond the current political and legal framework, which limits the funding of CSDP missions and operations and could help resolve the recurring difficulty of locating the military personnel needed.
The second report is the result of the joint work carried out by the High Representative and the Commissioner for the Internal Market, Elzbieta Bienkowska. Research relating to CSDP forms an important part of the report, as well as security of supply and implementation of Directive 2009/43/EC on intra-European defence equipment transfers. Nonetheless, it is particularly the application of the transparency and competition principles included in Directive 2009/81/EC on public markets in the security and defence fields that the report highlights. In this connection, the ball is in the Commission's court, which up to now, has displayed little interest in applying this directive in any kind of robust way, despite the fact that it has been transposed in all the EU member states since 2011. Moreover, there are still huge numbers of offsets relating to defence procurement markets that continue to distort competition. (Jan Kordys)