Brussels, 09/05/2001 (Agence Europe) - At the police conference to be held on Thursday in Brussels (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.6), the Member States are expected to informally announce the size and strength of police forces that they can make available to the EU for crisis management. This conference at the level of senior officials was organised by the Swedish Presidency to take stock of the situation pending the "pledging conference" that should be held this autumn.
Further to the appeal for contributions made in March by the Swedish Presidency to the Member States, the figures of police numbers available "should be very close to the objective set of 5,000 men, of whom 1000 could be deployed in 30 days, as decided at the Feira Summit", assured one European diplomat. According to the database set up by the political unit of the High Representative for CFSP/Secretary General of the Council Javier Solana, 3,500 European police officers are already mobilised for international missions, within the framework of the UN, OSCE and WEU in Albania. Some Member States that are expected to announce major contributions are not yet, however, ready to make their commitment formal. (See also EUROPE of 5 May, p.5, for the declarations by General Schuwirth at the WEU Assembly colloquy in Berlin).
The mobilisation of civilian forces, which began six months after the engagement of military forces, is proving far more "complex" in so far as, unlike the military field, there has been no precedent of this kind at NATO, notes one diplomat. In addition, according to the same source, the complexity of police forces in the Member States increases the difficulty as some Member States, like Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal, have both a military and a civilian police force, like the "gendarmerie" in France or the "carabinieri" in Italy. Deployment therefore calls for more complex national coordination among ministers concerned, and among the levels of power in federal States, such as Germany or Belgium, or in the States where the police is decentralised, as in the United Kingdom.
"And yet this diversity could be an asset", one Community source remarked, "since the different kinds of police force could be mobilised in different ways according to the tasks in hand and the two intervention scenarios: during a stabilised situation or during non-stabilised situations". Some Member States such as the Netherlands have already undertaken to modify their legislation to allow their national police to be mobilised for international missions, said the same source.
Qualitative issues, police training and the mobilisation of equipment should be specified at a later date, although such issues may be discussed on Thursday and again during the pledging conference in the autumn. Council Secretary General Javier Solana plans to create a police unit within his services, that will facilitate the coordination and follow-up of work. One police expert should, on the other hand, be attributed to the staff that ensures the follow-up of the Council's military activities, in order to guarantee coordination between the civilian and the military crisis management sections. The terms of this coordination have still to be specified. The work in course on the deployment of police forces is partly based on what the UN has already achieved. The setting in place of an operational unit at European level should also make it possible to improve police operations at the level of the United Nations, one European expert hopes.