Paris, 03/12/2003 (Agence Europe) - In a speech to the Assembly of the Western European Union on Tuesday, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker welcomed the positive initiative from the Naples conclave on permanent structured cooperation in European defence and a mutual defence clause being included in the constitutional treaty. As we indicated (EUROPE yesterday p 5), Mr Juncker, taking into consideration a report from the Assembly of the Western European Union, that mutual assistance was already being thought about and why not include it in the constitution. He called on the IGC to produce the necessary clarification in this area to deal with the "worrying debate" provoked by the those who caricature European defence projects by describing them as a "putsch against the USA", ("emancipation is not divorce", he stated). According to Juncker, this broad debate should allow a reconciliation between those who think that things have gone too far and those who think that things have stopped too soon. He insisted that defence ought to be "at the heart" of the future Constitution in order for it to be properly completed. He was also in favour of having an interparliamentary forum exercise control over intergovernmental areas. He explained that he did not have any problem with the WEU Assembly being in charge of this interparliamentary work and announced that he would be ask the European Council of Brussels to get the IGC to tackle the question of the ESDP parliamentary dimension, which has hitherto been ignored.
Belgian Liberal, Armand De Decker, elected on Tuesday as the new president of the Assembly, was pleased to hear these ideas and pointed out that when they sent troops abroad, it was the national parliamentarians who would assume responsibility with their respective governments and, "we are responsible for the quality of their weapons, their equipment…, we are confronted by the families of soldiers who lose their lives". While recognising that, "the European federalists balk at this fact", he admitted that "as long a European policy remained totally or partially intergovernmental, it should be controlled by a European Interparliamentary Assembly. The dialogue established with the EP's Foreign Affairs Committee was useful but insufficient, noted the outgoing president of the Belgian Senate. He also noted that dialogue needed to be continued but above all, convincing governments and national parliaments of the necessity to "conserve an Interparliamentary Assembly for control of European Security and Defence Policy. He contended that the European Union, of which the WEU was an integral part would have at its disposition, all the means for developing, fifty years after the failure of the EDC, a security and defence policy worthy of this name (if the European Defence Community had been developed it would have, "since 1954 given our continent a European army integrated into NATO"). He warned that if the constitution was not adopted, "I don not think that the EU could develop a European Security and Defence Policy on the basis of the Treaty of Nice…and the only solution consists in developing it as part of the revised Treaty of Brussels as a constitutive of the WEU". He considered that they were witnessing the "second revitalisation of the WEU and is third life" (the first revitalisation goes back to 1984: Editor's note).
Lord Bach, the UK Defence Procurement Minister warned that the United Kingdom agreed to update the Petersberg missions and create a European weapons agency (intergovernmental, he explained) but, "We won't agree to a common defence clause which would contradict or replace the security guarantee established through NATO". He considered that only structured coooperation focusing on "improving effective and rapidly deployable capability could be acceptable".
The Assembly also adopted the reports of: Johnny Wilkinson who requested that Europe should increase the capability of its airforce troops and weapons rapidly in a crisis. This would involve creating a European Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) Centre, procurement of more transport aircraft and precision-guided munitions, greater surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and closer cooperation at all levels; Guillermo Martinez Casan proposed inserting a proposal in the EU constitution stipulating that the Union would contribute to the "work of the new High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change set up by the UN Secretary General for the purpose of studying the major threats to peace and security, identifying the conditions for effective collective action and recommending the changes that are necessary to strengthen the United Nations by reforming its institutions and procedures". According to the rapporteur, European countries should provide more resources for the UN "to prevent threats to peace".