Time to tackle democratic deficit on defence

Date: 24/02/2000

THE EU has made rapid progress towards setting up an independent military force which could deal with crises in Europe's backyard since the initiative was launched last year.

Galvanised by the embarrassment they felt over their reliance on US assets during the campaign in Kosovo, Union governments have invested enormous amounts of political capital in developing a European security and defence policy which would enable them to tackle problems on the EU's doorstep without waiting for Washington's approval.

While the hard bargaining over how to find enough troops and equipment to staff the Union's new rapid reaction force will only begin in earnest in Portugal next week, progress on the political front has been so quick that it has prompted concern among NATO members that the new EU structures could rival the 50-year-old defence alliance.

To allay these fears, Union foreign policy supremo Javier Solana, who led NATO during last year's historic campaign (the first against a sovereign country), has drawn up plans to involve the alliance in shaping the EU's security and defence policy.

Solana's proposals make a great deal of sense from one perspective: the Union will, after all, have to rely on NATO assets for at least another five to ten years while it develops its own military capability. Yet they have prompted concern among many member states that Solana is trying to push the new EU defence body too far and fast into a close embrace with NATO.

France - a long-standing opponent of US domination of transatlantic defence structures - and neutral EU member states have voiced fears that this could rob the Union of the very independence it set out to gain by launching the initiative. The non-aligned states also fear that they may be pushed into military commitments which they have so far resisted by refusing to join NATO.

Most of these arguments have been played out behind closed doors and the understandable concern about security when sensitive military issues are being discussed suggests that the debate is going to get less, not more public. But the calls from MEPs and members of the NATO parliamentary assembly this week for more democractic input into policy-making in this area should be heeded by EU governments.

If they fail to encourage a more open debate now, they could be storing up problems for the future. If ordinary citizens have misgivings about the Union's approach, member states may not be able to rely on their support in future military campaigns when lives are at risk.