Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-11-21-Speech-3-429-000"
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"en.20121121.27.3-429-000"2
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"Mr President, Europe has never been so prosperous, so secure, nor so free. Words written in the European Security Strategy of 2003 are questionable today, confronted with increasingly complex risks and threats moving closer and closer to home. To those, we answer with a rush to slash our defence budgets, making life miserable for the defence planners, be they from NATO or the EU.
In conclusion, the report asks the High Representative to propose practical arrangements and guidelines for ensuring a rapid and coherent response in the event of a Member State invoking the mutual defence clause.
We also call on the Commission and the High Representative before the end of 2012 to make the joint proposal for a Council Decision, defining the arrangements for the implementation of the solidarity clause, clarifying in particular the roles and competences of different actors.
Moreover, NATO, responsible for the security of 21 of the 27 EU Member States, is confronted with the American reorientation towards Asia, forcing Europe to manage the consequences through increasing their contribution to NATO and strengthening the EU security and defence dimension.
This report is a step in that latter direction. To that effect, under the existing legal reality, the report does not ask for new instruments or new powers for the EU but argues for a more coherent and efficient interaction of the existing instruments, pointing to what the Union should do in case either one or both clauses are invoked, apart from and until the national mechanisms are activated. This way, the EU mechanisms do not substitute for the national ones. They only support and amend them, helping the Member States to deal successfully with a situation invoking the clauses.
In other words, the report is about solidarity. Any member of the EU, including those not in NATO, is entitled to respect from their organisation because solidarity is indispensable to the cohesion of the EU, acting as a deterrent of aggression too; particularly at a time when, due to the current crisis, centrifugal forces are getting stronger.
Although in practice the two clauses, mutual defence and solidarity, could be interconnected, the report takes them separately for reasons of clarity.
What the report names the mutual defence clause – because in the Treaty on European Union it is nameless – although it deals with measures in case of external armed aggression is a provision imported from the Treaty of Brussels establishing the Western European Union, which after Lisbon has been embedded into the EU’s legal basis. On the other hand, the solidarity clause is an addition following the multiplication of natural and man-made disasters both within and outside the EU.
Since Article 42(7) states that the EU NATO members rely for their security on the North Atlantic Treaty, the report underlines the importance of the relationship between the EU and NATO which should be seen as cooperative and not competitive, being instead organisations complementary to one another. To that effect, the report advocates the cohesion of the EU’s pooling and sharing and NATO’s smart defence initiatives; the creation in time of an EU headquarters; and defining today’s risks and threats in a modern way, adapted to reality.
In turn, the solidarity clause is meant to address the situations where the national capacities of a state to deal with a certain disaster are overwhelmed, to maintain a balance between preparedness and flexibility and to avoid the phenomenon of free riding when one prefers to rely more on others than on oneself.
The report, arguing for the best use of such instruments like the civil protection mechanism, the internal security strategy and the capacities of the External Action Service, supports the ongoing review of the emergency and crisis coordination arrangement and the development of an integrated situational awareness."@en1
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