Paris, 17/04/2000 (Agence Europe) - Alain Barrau, Chairman of the Delegation for the European Union at the French National Assembly, recalls in a report entitled "Foreign, Security and Defence Policy: where has Europe got to?" that the inventory drawn up last year by the WEU of the means and capabilities available for European crisis management missions reached "very severe" conclusions. He says: "given the severity of this statement, one may wonder how it will be possible for European States to reach the objectives that they have set themselves for 2003". He stresses that, "taking all countries together, the military spending of the Fifteen have fallen 22% since 1992", and this fall was 7% in 1999 (the strongest was that of Germany - 50% between 1990 and 1996 -while only France and Great Britain maintain their defence spending at a "substantial" level). Mr Barrau gives a detailed description of the acceleration of discussions over recent months on the subject of ESDP. He mainly states that, according to information that he has gathered from ministers concerned, a consensus seems to be on the way on the possibility of "achieving the restructuring of European forces without increasing the overall effort, with emphasis on rationalisation allowing for spending to be put to better use". In this context, Mr Barrau notes that the application of the method of "convergence indicators" to defence policy has caused "considerable reserve" and that French Defence Minister Alain Richard said he preferred that of "coherence indicators" (the Delegation, moreover, said, in the brief resolution adopted at the close of the debate with the rapporteur, that it was in favour of defining, with EU members, "coherence criteria on military spending, mainly in order to ensure their defence budgets are redirected towards spending on equipment and to guaranteeing in all the Member States that there is a sufficient level of research spending"). The coherence indicators like those proposed by Mr Richard, recalls Mr Barrau, comprise two elements: - first of all, "technical" indicators on the Union's ability to make a sufficient proportion of its forces ready for action and the ability of its Member States to effectively use their forces with a view to common actions"; - secondly, an "economic" criterion on the capacity of acquisition of modern equipment, together with a "mechanism that favours the rapprochement of acquisition solutions". It is difficult to define a convergence objective mainly because of the varying percentages of GDP devoted to defence in the Member States (France 2.8%, United Kingdom 2.7%, Germany 1.5%, Spain 1.3% …) as well as priorities according to the type of spending (equipment spending are very important in the United States, those for staff are important in Germany and Italy) and defence mechanisms (United Kingdom and France have "traditional relations between their land, maritime and air forces, but the German and Italian navies are smaller, and other countries deal with more specialised areas"). Recalling the conclusions of the informal EU defence ministers meeting, on 28 February in Sintra (see EUROPE of 28/29 February, pages 5 and 6), Mr Barrau considers, however, that the debate on convergence criteria is not closed.
(Report N.2254. Kiosque de l'Assemblée Nationale, 4 rue Aristide-Briand, 75007 Paris).