Brussels, 07/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Union's fist joint military exercise, the Crisis Management Exercise 2002 (CME 02) that took place from 22 to 28 May (see EUROPE of 22 May, p.7) allowed them to identify emerging difficulties, at this stage, the "pre-decision making" phase in the context of crisis management.
The three main measures to take to improve the unfolding of future military exercises are, according to this first experience: 1) perfection of safe information transmisssion. Currently, this system works well between the Military Headquarters and the General Secretariat of the Council (CFSP), but should be the case for all actors concerned; 2) improve the transmission and coherence of information forwarded to the Political and Security Committee (Cops). On the one hand, Cops has to be in possession of all necessary opinions at the time its decision is taken, and, on the other, that the opinions provided are coherent. "Differences between committees on the option to choose are normal, but there must be no firm opposition to the will to intervene or not at the time Cops has to take its decision. In future, we should move towards a general direction by Member states the basis of which the committees concerned will propose options", explains a source close to the issue; 3) involvement of a greater number of players in exercises, as in the geographic Directorates of the General Secretariat of the EU Council (the Balkans Directorate of the Caucasus Directorate, for example), as these would be involved in case of real crisis.
This year, the exercise, that was praised by Javier Solana (see EUROPE of 31 May, p.4), concerned the process of elaborating military options in case of crisis. "We stuck to that, so as not to be too ambitious for the first exercise", said the same source. Next year, the exercise, preparations for which should begin in October, will concern the choice between the two military options proposed this to rsolve the "fictive" crisis.