Marseilles, 14/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - The WEU is to eclipse as "player" in crisis management, but remain both "the depository of Article V of the Modified Brussels Treaty" and "debating and reflection forum" for security and defence policy, for governments, but also for parliaments. Furthermore, through its Armaments Group, it will be the "European forum for discussions on cooperation in matters of armaments", whereas "it will be the EU that will hold the commands of the operational part of the European Security and Defence Policy" (Esdp). This is how French Defence Minister, Alain Richard, when speaking to the press in Marseilles on 13 November, summarised the outcome of the ministerial session of the Council of the Western European Union that was held (though, it must be said, with the participation of very few ministers - less than a dozen defence ministers) at the Parc Chanot in three different formats: among ten (full members), twenty-one (with observers and associate members) and twenty-eight (with associate partners).
Mr. Richard said that, in Marseilles, the Council had taken the necessary decisions to set up "lighter WEU institutional structures" (that should be in place in the first half of 2001 at the latest), taking account of the social consequences of this transformation for WEU staff, who has accomplished very good work. It will, in particular, be a question of transferring to the EU the WEU Satellite Centre (in Torrejon, Spain) and the WEU Institute for Strategic Studies (in Paris), the minister stipulated (the Marseilles Declaration, that we are publishing in full in the annexe, does not say so, but this transfer should only be possible at the end of 2001). Another priority will be "the handing-over of the WEU Military Headquarters to the EU Military Headquarters" once the latter has been "declared operational" (as we stand, the military personnel within the Council of the Union is an embryo). On this, Richard declared: "We believe we shall reach agreement in Nice (at the European Council) allowing for the creation of the EU's Military Headquarters in its final form, and our plan is to render it operational within six months, thus before the summer of 2001". The French Defence Minister made a point of emphasising that over the past ten years, since its re-launch, the Western European Union had contributed in creating the conditions that have led the European Union to increasingly engage in security and defence. He said that it had not to be forgotten, for example, that the idea of "Petersberg missions", enshrined in the Amsterdam Treaty had been mooted by the WEU Council, at the Petersberg, near Bonn, in 1992. Asked about the involvement of European NATO Allies non-members of the EU in these developments, Mr. Richard answered that this issue "is on our agenda" and that he hoped that all the agreements would be concluded before the European Council of Nice so that "we can give complete satisfaction to the wishes of our partners".
As for WEU Secretary General Javier Solana (see yesterday's EUROPE for his address to the Council), he said that the Marseilles meeting had marked "a turning point for the evolution of security in Europe", and that the ministerial meeting in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday next on the engagement of European forces for the rapid reaction force would mark "the rise in power of the European Union" in crisis management in Europe. Under these conditions, why should the WEU remain alive? To that question, Solana answered: "because there is a Treaty, that will not disappear, as the countries which had signed it want it to remain in force (the Brussels Declaration alludes, other than in Article V, but also Article IX, to the WEU Council's obligation to report to the WEU Assembly on an annual basis)
Buhler defends WEU Secretariat
In his address before the Council, the President of the WEU Assembly, Klaus Buhler said in particular that the decision taken in a sovereign and informal manner by the Assembly to "complement its name" (European Assembly for Security and Defence Policy) in no way altered its nature, as defined in the Modified Brussels Treaty, which "says nothing over the Assembly's name, but only sets out how it must be composed".
Mr. Buhler also pleaded in favour of the staff of the WEU Secretariat, regarding is "socially unbearable that the first victims of European crisis management should be those who have so far assumed that task, on behalf of the EU". "It is a big mistake not to place the expertise of WEU staff at the EU's disposal", as well as being "a huge waste of taxpayers' money", he added.