Observatory on European defence, April 2001

6 April 2001
Meeting EU Defence Ministers
EU Defence Ministers held an informal meeting in Brussels. During the meeting, a common will to organise a second conference on the military capability of the Union emerged. The meeting will be held in November, under the Belgian Presidency.
Relations with NATO and Turkey remain of particular concern, as well as those with Russia.
Member states have been asked for a real economic effort to sustain the political will expressed in the ESDP framework.

The organisation of a Capability Conference is a sign of constant political attention to ESDP’s development and it will certainly contribute to further the process. Meanwhile, obstacles to the integration process have come to the fore, both at international level and within the EU.
In particular, the need to guarantee the implementation of the policies through a strong defence expenditure commitment. Different levels of defence spending among EU countries lead to a problem of burden-sharing, that can be faced in various ways. Progressive convergence of defence budgets could be adopted, as a way of achieving comparable spending among different countries, consistent with new political and strategic needs.
This target is difficult to reach, because of the problems in comparing defence budgets, given their different characteristics and rules. Thus, in the first phase the target of defence ministers could be to reach some capability goals, in qualitative terms.
Furthermore, there is an ongoing debate on the need to involve and gain the support of public opinion on this item. The issue is probably premature, but a consensus will be needed to take some unpopular policies, such as increasing defence spending.
Development of an “EU Strategic Concept”, which has raised considerable interest (the WEU Assembly recently hosted a seminar in Berlin on this subject), is an inevitable step, but seems to be inappropriate in the present scenario, in which some ambiguity could be constructive.