Coat of arms of the EU military staff |
EU MILITARY PRIORITIES
Five leading EU countries, but not
the UK, have said the UNION needs a new military “structure” to manage overseas
operations.
The foreign and defence ministers of
FRANCE, GERMANY, ITALY, POLAND and SPAIN issued the call in a joint communique after a meeting in
Paris on Thursday (15 November).
The paper says: “We are convinced
that the EU must set up, within a framework yet to-be-defined, true
civilian-military structures to plan and conduct missions and operations.”
It adds: “We should show
preparedness to hold available, train, deploy and sustain in theatre the
necessary civilian and military means.”
It lists a number of EU military
priorities for the coming years: helping SOMALIA to fight Islamists and
pirates; “a possible training mission to support the Malian armed forces” in
reconquering north MALI; “assistance to support the new LIBYAN authorities”
against Islamist militias; “normalisation” of the Western Balkans; “conflict
resolution” in GEORGIA; and police training in AFGHANISTAN.
The communique also calls for more
“pooling and sharing” of EU defence hardware in the context of crisis-related
budget cuts.
It identifies “space,
ballistic-missile defence, drones, air-to-air refuelling, airlift capacities,
medical support to operations [and] software defined radio” as pooling areas.
The reference to new
“civilian-military structures” comes after the UK last year blocked the
creation of a new operational headquarters (OHQ) in Brussels for EU military
missions.
BRITISH “NOSTALGIA” FOR PAST GREATNESS AS A REASON WHY IT IS
PULLING BACK FROM EU INTEGRATION
BRITAIN’S Telegraph newspaper
earlier this week cited a “senior FRENCH source” as saying that EU foreign
affairs chief Catherine Ashton supports the idea of an OHQ, which will become a
“ripe fruit” in the “long-term” as EU military operations multiply.
Ashton officials denied the report.
Meanwhile, the UK’s role in future
EU defence co-operation was a big topic at the Paris meeting.
French foreign minister Laurent
Fabius said the UK can join the group-of-five at any time: “The text which we
have developed is open to all of our colleagues, especially GREAT BRITAIN.”
FRENCH defence minister Jean-Yves Le
Drian said the communique is designed to “create a movement” ahead of an EU
summit on defence in 2013.
For his part, POLISH foreign
minister Radek Sikorski said: “If the EU wants to become a superpower, and POLAND
supports this, then we must have the capability to exert influence in our
neighbourhood … Sometimes we must use force to back our diplomacy.”
He called for an “ambitious” EU
budget for 2014 to 2020 to help with defence co-ordination.
Speaking in a separate interview in
UK newspaper The Times also on Thursday, Sikorski blamed BRITISH “nostalgia”
for past greatness as a reason why it is pulling back from EU integration and
why it wants to cut the EU budget.
He touched on historic sensitivities
by describing EU spending as a kind of “Marshall plan.”
He said POLAND and other former-SOVIET-controlled
EU countries missed out on the plan – a massive injection of US money to
rebuild EUROPE after World War II – because UK and US leaders at a summit in
Yalta in 1945 gave the SOVIET UNION control of eastern EUROPE.
“We fought Hitler alone, giving you
[the UK] valuable time to prepare for fighting. But we did not enjoy freedom
after World War II … Because of Yalta, we could not benefit [from the Marshall
plan]. EUROPEAN cohesion funds are our Marshall plan for catching up with EUROPE,”
he noted.
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