EUROPEAN DEFENSE COOPERATION MOVING AHEAD

 NOVEMBER 13:

One of the important topics discussed in Europe these days is how we can and should improve our joint effort to defend our continent.  We are living in an un-certain world with Putin, the Chinese, an unstable Middle East and a US in trouble finding itself.  So many European leaders with Macron and Merkel in the lead want Europe to do more and do better when defense is concerned.  This is also why even the Danes are discussing, if time has come to abolish its position outside the European defense activities.

Already in the beginning of the 1950ies initiatives were taken to start a special defense cooperation in Europe.  NATO started in 1949. But with the aggressive behaviour of the Soviet Union and of Stalin everybody agreed that more had to be done, and that the disarmed West Germany had to contribute to it too.  A way and a structure had to be found, so that re-armament of West Germany would be acceptable to all. The first initiative was the European Defense Community, EDC.  It was taken by “The Six”, the same countries which already started the European Coal and Steel Community from 1952. It was France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and West Germany.  EDC was ratified by the parliaments of the involved countries. Except by France. The year was now 1954. Stalin had died, and the Korean War was over. The Gaullists and the Communists held strong positions in the French parliament. So, the project was voted down.  Instead it was agreed that the re-armament of West Germany took place from the following year 1955 by the country’s membership of NATO.

For many years now almost all cooperation in defense matters took place in NATO. Only in 2004 the EU member states ( except Denmark ) agreed to create the European Defense Agency. It was an inter-governmental cooperation. Its task was to promote and facilitate cooperation in defense between the participating countries.

EU’s Lisbon Treaty from 2009 created a cooperation on a common foreign and security policy in the EU. But it was in reality only by the end of 2016 that developments really took speed.  Putin had with his illegal annexation of Crimea and his de facto involvement in the fights in the east of Ukraina made Europe nervous. And with the election of the more inward-looking US president Donald Trump ( “America First” ) it was agreed that now was the moment to do something in concrete terms to strengthen the defence cooperation in Europe.

The result was PESCO  ( Permanent Structured Cooperation ) inside the framework of the EU treaties.  So PESCO is an integrated part of the EU.  All member states except Denmark, Malta and the United Kingdom (until January 2020) are members of PESCO.  Also the neutral countries Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Austria and Cyprus.

The purpose of PESCO is to :

Enhance cooperation; increase investments; join forces ; do things together ; spend together ; invest together ; buy together; act together.

Altogether 17 concrete, joint projects have been agreed and are being implemented.

The EU member states used in 2015 in total 203 billion € on defense.  It is expected that with PESCO it will after some years be possible to save between 25 and 100 billion € annually.

From 2017 a special European Defense Fund has been established. It has an annual budget of 5,5 billion €.  It will be used to strengthen joint efforts in defense research, innovative defense initiatives, etc.

At the same time the EU has through its defense cooperation during the last 15 years been in charge of more than 30 civilian and military projects around the world. The tasks have been peacebuilding, peacekeeping, nation building, etc.  At the moment  six military and ten civilian projects are ongoing – with a directly involved staff of about 4.000 people.

You can ask:  Doesn’t all this give possibilities for competition and overlapping with what NATO is doing?  Altogether 21 EU member states are also a member of NATO. The clear answer is NO.  The two organisations are working closely together. And as recently as in July 2018 a new joint EU-NATO declaration about cooperation and coordination was signed and is supported by everybody involved.

Logo for European defense cooperation: