Madrid, 08/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - Some 250 people from 30 European countries and the United States took part, on 5 March, in a seminar organised in Madrid by the Western European Assembly on the theme: "Equipping our forces for Europe's security and crisis management". On that occasion, Klaus Bühler, President of the Assembly, pleaded in favour of the creation of a European fund for defence research and proposed that the EU Military Committee should ensure co-ordination between the European defence industry and the ESDP. Regarding the work of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Mr Bühler suggested that it should also examine the possibility of introducing a mutual assistance clause in the EU Treaty. He warned against the danger of changing the ESDP into an "à la carted" policy and announced that the Assembly would make a contribution to the Convention on this point.
The Minister of State for Defence representing the Spanish Presidency of the EU and WEU Councils, Fernando Diez Moreno, presented a ten-point action plan that "constitutes a basic document on European Armaments Policy (EAP)". The European armaments industry must be to the service of the ESDP, and not the other way round, he said. He called for the creation of a single European armaments organisation in order to strengthen the European presence on the armaments market and suggested giving National Armament Directors the possibility of meeting officially within the EU to advise European Union defence ministers.
Julian Lindley-French, of the EU Security Studies Institute, said for his part that "for too long now, Europe has focused its effort on the institutional aspects of defence and has not prepared its forces to effectively counter the real threats". The main problem confronting Europeans would be bad organisation and insufficient investment. He also wondered whether the European Rapid Reaction Force, of the size of an army corps, really corresponds to what Europe needs. The war in Afghanistan, he said, has shown the need to deploy, without delay, special immediate reaction forces, in a more restricted format, that can take on peace-keeping missions of varying intensity. Europeans must focus on the financing of special elite forces, of around 5,000 men, he said. Regarding the European shortcomings at command level, Mr Lindley-French suggested progressive "Europeanisation" of SHAPE, which should be better able to predict what the various European coalitions will be and how to command them. The US army must "stop being an obstacle to SHAPE reform", he said, as it is "highly unlikely that the United States will one day be engaged in a military mission within a multinational structure again", whereas the Europeans need a SHAPE that is recast in order to carry out the appropriate operational planning. He also stressed the need to have autonomous European strategic intelligence capabilities.