Brussels, 19/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister and President of the Council, Louis Michel, said that they were non-aligned allies, echoing the phrase coined by the Green German MEP Daniel Cohn Bendit at an in camera joint meeting of
the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committees of national parliaments and the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday. Mr Michel explained that the phrase meant that there should be mutual influence and information. Asked by a group of journalists to explain the support that the EU would provide in the "war" against terrorism, he refused to talk of "war", preferring to speak of the "fight against terrorism". He explained that Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance mentions assistance and support, but not necessarily war. Article 5 of the Washington Treaty implied total solidarity between members of the Atlantic Alliance, but is also an expression of equal solidarity between its members, explained the President of Belgian Senate, Armand de Decker, who was chairing the meeting with the President of the EP's Foreign Affairs Committee, Elmar Brok. Mr de Decker said it was also a matter of making the specific interests of Europeans understood, since although they shared the same values, the view of the world from Europe did not always coincide with the view of the world as seen by the United States. Mr de Decker added that we had a common desire to fight the barbarism of terrorism, but there would have to be discussions between the Allies over the means to be used to do that. There was broad agreement at MEP level about fighting the causes of terrorism, explained Elmar Brok, but not about fighting Islam or Muslims. Louis expressed concern after the in camera meeting at the fact that some deputies were confusing terrorism with immigration.
On the initiative of Messrs de Decker and Brok, national and European deputies heard the President of the Council, Louis Michel, the Belgian Defence Minister, André Flahaut, the High Representative for CFSP, Javier Solana, and the External Affairs Commissioner, Chris Patten, explain the common European Defence policy and the current security situation following the attacks on New York and Washington. Armand de Decker emphasised that before the Troika left for Washington and before the extraordinary Summit on Friday, it was important for national and European deputies to have the chance to express views and hear the European authorities' views.
In the longer term, this type of joint hearing is likely to be repeated to enable national deputies to meet with European representatives and to convince the deputies holding the purse strings of national defence budgets to size up European challenges, particularly in terms of surveillance, satellites or the objectives of conflict prevention forces.