Brussels, 05/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - In Paris on Thursday 4 October, in a speech opening the public hearings of the French Senate's commission on the White Paper relating to national defence and security, Javier Solana - who is secretary general of the EU Council and EU high representative for the CFSP - set out ways to strengthen European Security and Defence Policy (ESDSP). The new White Paper on the defence of France is due to be ready in March 2008.
“When I speak of ESDP operations you should understand conflict prevention, counter-terrorism and the trafficking of drugs and human beings. I speak of progress made in ESDP, but, when you hear what the theatres of operation are, you have to understand that there is nothing easy about these missions”, Solana told the committee set up in August by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to develop new guidelines for French defence. He went on to set out the three ways that ESDP can be reinforced: - strengthened capabilities, crisis response and intelligence.
“First of all capabilities - now and always”, Solana continued, stressing that these would require defence spending to be increased and used to best advantage. France, which announced in August this year that it intended to keep its defence budget at 2% of GDP, was happy to confirm this. Efforts must be made at the level of battlegroups, “a powerful tool for transformation and interoperability”, the European Defence Agency (EDA) and better planning and relations with NATO. “By strengthening these capabilities, Europe will make its complementarity with the Alliance more effective in the various theatres of intervention that it now shares”, the EU foreign policy chief said.
And then there is “disaster response” because “in the external theatres, this kind of operation can but strengthen the legitimacy of the European Union” and “civil protection missions would allow the best approach to be adopted based on de facto solidarity between groups of countries interested by the same problems and wishing to pool their means”.
When it comes to intelligence, “it all boils down to communication and confidence”, he said, before going on to add: “working on this together would, I believe, be in the interest of security and defence of each member nation”. (aby).