Brussels, 10/05/2001 (Agence Europe) - At the conference on the "police capabilities of Member States for international crisis management", organised in Brussels on Thursday by the Swedish Presidency of the Council, Member States announced that they would place some 4,500 police officers at the EU's disposal. Several federal States, where decisions depend on regional authorities, including Germany and Belgium, should specify their contribution by the ministerial pledging conference to be held in the autumn, which should allow for the figure, set at the Feira Summit of 5,000 officers, 1000 of whom able to be mobilized within 30 days, to be reached.
The pledges announced by Member States correspond to approximately 1% of their national police personnel, says a Community source. Italy should mobilize some 900 officers; France announced that it could contribute over 800 (600 military gendarmes and 206 police officers); Spain 500, 300 of whom could be mobilized within 30 days; the United Kingdom 450 policemen or women mobilized on a voluntary basis; Portugal 240; Sweden between 160 and 170; Greece 150, 30 of whom could be mobilized quickly; Denmark 125, of whom 25 could be mobilized swiftly; Austria between 110 and 120, of whom 20 could be mobilized quickly; Finland between 60 and 70, Luxembourg 6. The Netherlands announced as an indication that it hoped to be able to mobilize some 170 officers, and Belgium sixty or so a year. Ireland recalled that it currently had 60 officers deployed in international missions. The Swedish Presidency insists that 20 to 25% of the personnel should be made up of women, to intervene notably in case of sexual crimes. Thursday, "there were only three women, and none in managerial positions", a European diplomat nevertheless noted.
In addition to this first identification of contributions, to be confirmed by the European ministers during the pledging conference, the meeting focused on the qualitative aspect of the future civilian forces and their training, stressed Swedish Head of Police Sten Heckscher at the end of the work. The Swedish Presidency mainly proposed to introduce a certificate issued after training, to be given to at least 1000 officers deployable within 30 days. The Presidency stressed that the diversity of forces proposed (civilian or military, armed or not, etc.) should allow a response to be given to every kind of mission entrusted to them, and to the different levels of crisis intensity. Some delegations hoped that the database to be completed by the Council Secretariat General would allow coherent mobilisation of these different forces. The police representatives welcomed in this respect the decision to create a police unit in Council, announced Javier Solana.
France proposes work programme
On the basis of a proposal for a work programme presented by France, the Member States listed the problems to be resolved by 2003. They include: the command structure (civilian or military?), planning needs, the legal base on which police intervention is based in third countries, the financing of equipment (the European Commission reportedly indicated that it has no budget for this), logistic means, interoperability between the different kinds of forces, and the strategy for ending crises. "It would be desirable to establish an action programme that may be adopted during the Gothenburg Summit", stressed the director general for the French national gendarmerie, Pierre Steinmetz, speaking before the press. The European action plan should be based, on other things, on what is learnt from the Brahimi report on UN peace operations.