Not (yet?) a European Army
The current headlines from Europe are dominated by Brexit. But that will pass. How Europe will create more security, both at its common border (Schengen) and in its ‘near-abroad’ (Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa) has been, is and will remain one of the EU’s top priorities.
To get ‘lost in EU abbreviations’ is happening to everybody, including Brussels based specialists working every day particularly on questions of European security. EU slang, difficult at any time in any area, becomes positively impenetrable with regard to security. Reflecting the fact that security and defense matters count among the most jealously guarded prerogatives of national states, particularly reluctant to cede sovereignty in this core area. Thus, despite an evident and growing need to complement political and economic union with the necessary muscle to defend and promote such union, the many attempts to build supranational defense, let alone a European army, have ended in plans, concepts, strategic games and the like, but only limited military substance.
But let’s go step by step into the jungle of security and defense related challenges for Europe. Frontex, short for frontières extérieures, the agency tasked with the common protection of the EU’s external borders, has actually been given new substance as the European Border and Coast Guard Agency since the migration crisis of 2015. (Still very much in parallel to what each country does on a national basis). The EU commission has recently proposed to the member countries to bolster Frontex with 10’000 men (and women) to increase common security at Europe’s common border (the Schengen border). As border police, Frontex has traditionally been within the (European) Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), umbrella over among other things ‘Schengen’, and not under the realm of EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CSFP). Sounds arcane but is important for intergovernmental policy making, still the norm in many areas of EU-cooperation. The complexity is additionally furthered by the participation of NonEU members such as Switzerland and Norway, who are full ‘Schengen’ countries.
The beefing up of Frontex, if and when it comes to pass, is thus presently still being discussed, administered and developed, both in capitals and in Brussels, by Justice related structures. A separate administrative area – the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), part of the just mentioned Foreign and Security Policy CSFP – is the vessel for multiple European military operations as well as civil missions with security related content. Geographically they cover crisis spots from sub-Saharan Africa over the Maghreb to the Balkans and the Ukraine. Current and past such endeavors number almost 40. Each of course with its own abbreviation. But they are one-shot affairs, cobbled together ad hoc from national security means, either civil or military.
Emmanuel Macron is the latest in a number of convinced Europeans who explicitly wants to change that. Pesco (Permanent Structured Cooperation) was his first attempt to create a unified military structure, ready for action without prior negotiations with each participant EU member country. Paradoxically enough Pesco has turned out too much of a success for its own good. Intended by the French as an intra EU ‘coalition of the willing’ (non-mandatory participation open to all EU-members), all EU-members actually did join, except ‘brexiting’ Great-Britain, Denmark and Malta. Currently nationalist leaning countries such as Poland and Hungary clearly to block, rather than to further supranational European defense. That is true at least where the one part of Pesco is concerned dedicated to common military missions. A second part obligates each member to set mandatory targets for its national defense budget, security related research and common armaments policy.
According to Brussels insiders, here is where the present importance of Pesco lies. The waste of having around 20 different national defense systems within the EU, including Army, Navy and Airforce, their procurement and development, is gigantic. It is also a high hurdle when cooperation under military duress is needed. Pesco, and its de-facto secretariat, the European Defense Agency, could mean a step forward if not towards a European Army but still closer cooperation in armament policy.
The most promising push for more European military muscle is Macron’s recently unveiled European Intervention Initiative (EII) is in principle open to all European countries – NonEU Nato members such as Norway and Turkey as well as former Neutrals in the EU (Austria, Finland, Sweden)unwilling, mostly for historic reasons, to join Nato, even European outsider Switzerland – and is to be used in emergency situations as a rapid intervention force. Again without the necessity of prior negotiations on participation of national armed forces and their financing while under a common EU flag.
Signed up for EII have already the three big European military powers, the UK, France and Germany as well as Spain and Portugal, the European stalwarts Holland and Belgium and the Nordics Denmark and Estonia. If at all, EII might be the solution to keep the UK integrated into European defense after Brexit.
That would be the way out of a conundrum that has dogged European security from the beginning: the parallelism with Nato. Not only, but mainly London, in line with Washington, has always blocked serious European defense with the ‘duplication objection’: don’t do what Nato does better. With the UK out of the EU and thus unable to interfere in its political decision making on the highest level, EII would help both sides. The EU with European integrated defense which would include e.g. the British nuclear deterrent, and London, mindful of the Trumpian question marks hanging over Nato, to stay involved with European defense without being an EU member.
Picture: © European Union 2014 – European Parliament