BRUSSELS, April 29: Seeking to secure more global clout, leaders from Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg on Tuesday unveiled ambitious plans for a “European security and defence union” and vowed to immediately step up their military cooperation.
The blueprint said the four countries would set up a “multinational deployable force headquarters for joint operations” no later than 2004 and called on other European Union states to join efforts to create a Brussels- based “nucleus” collective planning and operational capability available for EU-led military operations, without recourse to NATO assets.
“We believe it is necessary to give new impetus to the construction of a Europe of security and defence,” said a joint statement released by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude Juncker.
Creating a European defence union was needed to give real clout to an emerging EU common foreign policy, the four leaders said.
“This is not antagonistic...we are not in competition with NATO,” Mr Verhofstadt told reporters at a joint press conference with the other three leaders. The initiative was open to all present and future European Union members, he added.
“Obviously this is not directed against NATO,” Mr Schroeder said, adding that a strengthening of the European pillar inside the 19-nation NATO would also reinforce the alliance.
By agreeing to work together to build a European defence union, France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg were moving from rhetoric to concrete and credible plans, said Mr Juncker.
But French President Jacques Chirac warned the US it would have to learn to operate in a “multipolar” world and work with a “strong” Europe.
The transatlantic relationship was based on a “partnership of equals”, he underlined.
The four leaders said a new EU treaty currently being drafted should recognize the concept of a European Security and Defence Union and must allow a small group of like-minded states to set up “enhanced cooperation” in the field of defence.
Europe’s new treaty must also include a “clause of solidarity and common security binding all member states”, it added.
Countries which joined the defence union would have an obligation to harmonize their position on security issues and also step up spending on military equipment.
As part of a second track of immediate actions to reinforce military cooperation, Mr Verhofstadt said the four governments would improve the existing European rapid reaction capability by creating a “nucleus capability around the Franco-German brigade in which Belgian commando elements will be integrated”.
A European command for strategic air transport available for European and NATO operations would be created by June next year. The four countries would also take “the necessary steps to establish, not later than 2004, a multinational deployable force headquarters for joint operations”, the statement said.
Crucially too, the four governments called for the creation of a “nucleus” collective capability for planning and conducting operations for the EU which did not involve NATO participation.
