Military tasks follow a different path

In the 15 years since the then 15 member states of the Union laid down which military tasks the EU could embark upon, the Union’s security operations have developed differently from what was envisaged.

The Petersberg tasks, adopted by heads of state and government in June 1992 and incorporated in the 1998 Amsterdam treaty, allowed the EU to undertake humanitarian and rescue operations, peacekeeping, crisis management and peacemaking missions.

The three types of missions described by the Petersberg tasks cover a large range of military tasks from the most modest to the most robust.

In 1999, in the so-called Helsinki Headline goal, member states set themselves the goal of being able by 2003 to deploy rapidly and then sustain forces capable of the full range of Petersberg tasks, including the most demanding.

Since 2003, the Union has launched 18 police and military operations involving more than 30,000 EU personnel. Eight are completed, with the remaining ten spread from the Western Balkans to the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

But large-scale peacemaking operations are ruled out by the lack of available manpower and a shortage of assets which make such deployments possible and sustainable, as well as the aversion of voters to putting soldiers in risky operations.

At a technical level, the lack of ‘strategic lift’ - necessary to transport significant forces over long distances - is an oft-cited limit on the EU’s ambitions.

So far the EU has focused on peacekeeping operations of battle-group size, no bigger than 2,000 personnel, with the exception of the EU military operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Eufor-Althea, which was launched on 2 December 2004 with 7,000 troops. Most operations completed so far have been relatively short-term - around a year each.

But the lack of resources has forced the EU to adapt and has had some welcome results as far as policymakers are concerned.

Because they are relatively cheap, involve few casualties and have maximum political effect, the number of operations in which the EU reforms police forces, defence ministries or border monitoring systems has increased dramatically.

In June, the EU will send, as part of a larger police mission to Afghanistan, a handful of experts into Afghan ministries to revise the way salaries are paid.

Officials say that separating the chain of payments from the chain of command makes an impact by reducing the opportunities for corruption.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo this meant more soldiers got paid, making them less likely to rob civilians.

But increasingly the EU wants to deal with some of the capabilities problems it has, not by enforcing quotas and commitments on member states, but through technology.

One problem identified by military planners is that soldiers from different member states use different commun-ications technologies or frequency modulations. On EU missions that involve many member states this makes in-theatre communications difficult.

The response of the EDA has been to invest in software-defined radio, a technology that allows soldiers to pick up frequencies from allies, by reprogramming software rather than changing hardware.

In the 15 years since the then 15 member states of the Union laid down which military tasks the EU could embark upon, the Union’s security operations have developed differently from what was envisaged.

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