PARLIAMENTARISATION OF THE EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY

Transcription

1 GENEVA CENTRE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF ARMED FORCES (DCAF) WORKING PAPER SERIES NO. 82 PARLIAMENTARISATION OF THE EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY Armin Laschet Member of the European Parliament, Aachen, Germany Geneva, August 2002

2

3 GENEVA CENTRE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF ARMED FORCES (DCAF) WORKING PAPER SERIES - NO. 82 PARLIAMENTARISATION OF THE EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY Armin Laschet Member of the European Parliament, Aachen, Germany Geneva, August 2002

4 DCAF Working Papers Series DCAF Working Paper Series constitutes studies designed to promote reflection and discussion on civil-military relations and issues of democratic control over defence and security sector. These studies are preliminary and subject to further revisions. The publication of these documents is unedited and unreviewed. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. DCAF Working Papers are not for quotation without permission from the author(s) and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces.

5 PARLIAMENTARISATION OF THE EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY 1 Armin Laschet In the month following the EU Summit in Berlin 1999, when in the face of the terrible Kosovo war the Heads of State and Government finally decided that it was time to set up European structures for military and non-military crisis management according to the Petersberg tasks, the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) has made substantial progress. But although at the Laeken summit a formal decision on the limited operational readiness of the Rapid Reaction Force has been reached (i.e. as regards operations at the lower end of the Petersberg tasks), there is still much to do in order to achieve the Helsinki goal by 2003: I am particularly thinking of: 1) the lack of sufficient financial resources needed to overcome strategic shortcomings and to do something about the technological backwardness and the growing dependency on the United States, as well as of 2) the still pending EU-NATO agreement on access to the latter's planning facilities and military capabilities which has been blocked for almost two years now, first by Turkey and now by Greece. Another fundamental issue related to ESDP is democratic accountability. Admittedly, parliamentary control has not caught much public attention so far, since the Council of Ministers has always been very keen on sweeping it under the carpet. Despite several and persistent claims by the European Parliament to put this topic on the political agenda, you will not find any trace of it in any of the summit or council conclusions. Parliamentary control on ESDP, and on CFSP in general, makes the Council see red. It is true and to a certain point understandable that defence matters have always been a difficult field for democratic control. The rule of security and confidentiality 1 Paper presented at the 4 th Workshop on "Strengthening Parliamentary Oversight of International Military Cooperation and Institutions", held in Brussels July 2002, organized by the Working Group on the Parliamentary Control of Armed Forces (PCAF) of the of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. 1

6 obviously often conflicts with the principles of transparency and control, and thus certain tensions between the executive and legislative have always been a habit. Not without reason in the early times of parliamentary democracy of the 19 th century, the whole sphere of foreign policy was considered as the Crown's prerogative and mainly withdrawn from parliament's oversight. And even today, in parliamentary monarchies as the UK or semi-presidential systems like in France, part of this old fashioned idea which considers foreign affairs as a prerogative of the executive is being successfully kept alive. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 21 st century, it is time to abandon this idea, and also the Council of Ministers with his complacent attitude would be well-advised to recognize that a long-term success of ESDP can and will not only be based on efficient military capabilities, but to a high degree also on public support. Let me just remind you all the demonstrations and acts of violence on the fringes of several European and global summits during the last years: they should make us aware of the fact that secret diplomacy and obscure decision making processes, far away from the citizens and behind closed doors, can have literally explosive consequences. On the long term, only a policy which has the necessary democratic legitimacy can be effective and convincing enough. This is even more the case for a policy area as ESDP which involves such sensitive issues like the use of force and the deployment of troops in crisis areas. So far, ESDP has met with relatively high approval among European citizens, and especially after the events of 11 September 2002 the awareness has even risen that a common security policy is indispensable if we want to gain control of the global threat of terrorism. But if our citizens should one day have the impression that they have no sufficient control over the Council's decisions regarding defence expenditures or Petersberg missions, public support could rapidly vanish, thus putting everything in jeopardy. It is true that big European projects do not necessarily have to be immediate hits with the public - the Euro is the best example for that - but neither should we forget that the European defence had already failed once, almost 50 years ago, to win support at the French Assemblée Nationale. The larger the extent of worldwide globalisation and international interdependence becomes, and the more policy areas leave the traditional nation state setting and 2

7 require international solutions, the bigger the people's wish for transparency and legitimacy and their claim for accountability and information. Especially for a Europe which has set itself the goal to become more understandable and transparent for its citizens, it is fundamental that a security and defence policy culture is fostered within parliamentary structures as soon as possible. Still, compared to this pretension the EU's institutional reality of today, does not yet correspond to a modern understanding of democracy. I am thinking particularly of the Council's working methods, which in spite of the latest mini-reforms adopted at the Sevilla summit, are still obscure and far too complicated. As Mrs. Bono had correctly stated in one of the earlier sessions of this workshop: "ESDP is exercised through a set of opaque policy-making structures." Mr. Spencer from the European Center of Public Affairs said last year in May, at the Seminar of the Parliamentary Dimension of ESDP in The Hague, that a way had to be found to prevent the Council of Ministers from behaving like a "rogue elephant". We have made some progress in this respect since then, but we have still not managed to make the representatives of national governments come down from their high horse. What does the situation look like today? At what stage of parliamentarisation of ESDP are we? Who controls ESDP and the Council and how can this oversight be improved and intensified? The facts are clear: The responsibility for parliamentary monitoring of ESDP is equally shared between the European Parliament and the national parliaments on the basis of their respective rights and duties under relevant treaties and constitutions. As long as the ESDP continues to function only as a form of intergovernmental cooperation, military expenditure and the deployment of national armed forces continue to fall within the exclusive competence of the national parliaments, while the European Parliament - as the only EU body directly elected by the citizens of Europe - performs its supervisory role 1. by means of the right to be informed and the right to be consulted conferred on it by Article 21 of the Treaty on European Union, chapter XI of the European 3

8 Parliament's Rules of Procedure and art. 40 of the interinstitutional agreement of 6 May 1999, and 2. by means of its budgetary powers in relation to the CFSP budget which it exercises as part of the budgetary authority by virtue of Article 28 of the Treaty on European Union and art. 39 and 40 of the interinstitutional agreement of 6 May Let me also mention that as far as crisis prevention and civilian crisis management are concerned, which more and more overlap ESDP tasks and must be linked to the new military ESDP capabilities in fulfilment of the Petersberg tasks, these anyway fall under the first pillar and are consequently put under the EP's control. As far as the European Parliament's right to be informed and consulted is concerned, which is one of the most classical parliamentary rights, I can say, as a former member of a national parliament, that Mr. Solana and Mr. Patten account to the European Parliament and/ or the Foreign Affairs Committee much more often and more detailed than many of the national foreign or defence ministers actually do. Still, as it is the case for the national parliaments, the European Parliament is not yet involved in active ESDP decision-making. Nevertheless, with regard to the European Parliament's right to be informed we have recently reached a very important success on classified documents. In fact, a small Committee of five MEPs is likely to be confidentially informed by the Council about EU military and secret service operations. Once security checked, the members of this new "Security Committee" shall get access to classified documents and will be regularly briefed in camera by Javier Solana. When it comes to its budgetary powers, it is quite all right to say that the EP is not only an equal negotiating party, besides the Council, but already the "maître du jeu" as concerns the CFSP/ ESDP budget. Especially the Interinstitutional Agreement from 1990 is very clear about this: Firstly, Council and EP have to agree each year on the amount of the operational CFSP/ ESDP expenditure - which according to art. 28 EU Treaty is charged to the Community budget (except for such expenditure arising from operations 4

9 having military or defence implications) and therefore put under the EP's control - and on the distribution of this amount between the articles of the CFSP budget chapter (B8); secondly, the Presidency of the Council will consult the EP annually on the main aspects and basic choices of the CFSP/ ESDP, including the financial implications for the Community budget; and thirdly, and this is a very remarkable aspect, when adopting decisions in the field of CFSP/ ESDP entailing expenditure, the Council must immediately communicate to the EP an estimate of costs envisaged, which is a very strong form of accountability. To sum it up, we can say that the CFSP/ ESDP budget can only be adopted if the European Parliament agrees with its general political orientation, and that thanks to these extensive budgetary powers the European Parliament already exerts an important ex ante control over the ESDP guidelines, thus fully sharing responsibility for parliamentary oversight with the national parliaments, which of course continue to keep and exercise their own competencies as far as military spending and operational questions of their own armies is concerned. In this context, let me add that the function of interparliamentary assemblies, as for example the NATO Parliament or the OSCE Assembly, which meet only twice a year and play only a consultative role, amounts to nothing more than fostering parliamentary contacts and exchanges of view, but has nothing at all to do with those classical parliamentary scrutiny rights mentioned above. In order to strengthen parliamentary oversight in the field of ESDP, their contribution, however indispensable it may be, will always remain merely complementary. As concerns the former WEU Assembly, now Interim European and Security Defence Assembly, the situation is different: Now that the fundamental functions of the WEU have effectively been integrated into the EU, this assembly has lost its "raison d'être", its right to exist. There is no gap in parliamentary oversight caused by the integration of certain WEU-tasks into the EU framework - as the WEU Assembly has often claimed, hoping it could be called to fill this gap - since European Parliament and national parliaments share clear budgetary and control competencies. One thing seems evident to me: If the WEU Assembly did not exist then certainly no-one would 5

10 seek to create it, and the European Parliament has several times reiterated its view that this institution should be discontinued. I have to admit that I am quite happy that the debate on the parliamentary dimension of ESDP has finally stopped tripping over the problem of existing institutions and rivalries between national parliaments and international assemblies. This has been the case about one year ago when we had intensive but completely useless debates on the questions whether there was a need for a supplementary institutional body and which of the institutions should be mainly responsible for parliamentary oversight. I am happy that this debate stopped because governments would like nothing better than for these squabbles about competencies to continue. Although finally the responsibilities to ensure a strong parliamentary dimension to the ESDP are clearly delimited, there is of course still a lot of scope of action in order to improve and intensify parliamentary control. We are only at the beginning of parliamentarisation of ESDP. I believe that if the European and national levels were carefully coordinated, appropriate control and parliamentary monitoring could be guaranteed, both horizontally (covering all issues and stages of the ESDP) and across the board (with regard to inter-pillar actions). Therefore, and first of all, it would be desirable to step up and improve the exchange of information between the European Parliament and the national parliaments in relation to questions concerning the CFSP or the ESDP, in order to make more extensive dialogue between the parliaments possible. Then, in order to ensure that the ESDP is monitored in an appropriate manner by the European Parliament and national parliaments, the meetings which have so far been held between the chairmen of the foreign affairs and defence committees of national parliaments and the EP should be extended. What the European Parliament proposes is a Parliamentary Conference on the ESDP to be held on a regular basis and to be convened jointly by the parliament of the Member State holding the presidency and by the European Parliament, through its Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy. 6

11 In this context, the chairmen of the committees responsible respectively for foreign affairs, for defence and for EU affairs of the national parliaments of the Member States, of the applicant states as well as of the European Parliament should take part in this conference. Furthermore, this Conference should be extended to include additional members of the various committees to ensure it is broadly representative of the political spectrum, on the basis of equal representation for the European Parliament. Under certain conditions it would also be desirable to involve the parliaments of the non-eu NATO members and of the candidate countries as observers, together with the parliamentary assembly of NATO, in the work of the parliamentary conference on the ESDP. The aim of the Conference would be to review, in conjunction with the Council Presidency, the High Representative for the CFSP and the Commissioner responsible for external relations, the development of the EU common security and defence policy with a view to ensuring appropriate parliamentary monitoring of the policy. What else has to be done in order to proceed on the way of parliamentarisation of ESDP? First of all, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that a strong, efficient and viable European armaments industry and an effective procurement policy are vital to the development of the ESDP. Therefore it is necessary to improve European cooperation in the field of armaments procurement and to rationalise defence efforts, increase synergy between national and multinational projects and optimise the use of financial resources. An important obstacle to EU cooperation in the field of defence industries could be removed if within the post-nice process art. 296 EC Treaty would be amended, thus applying the discipline of the Single Market also to the defence industries. If arms exports came under Community competence, this would also increase parliamentary oversight and control in this field. Then, as far as the classical parliamentary right to be informed in relation to CFSP/ ESDP is concerned, the consultation of the EP should definitely be extended, at least as regards the following points: 7

12 Instead of the Council Presidency being bound by a simple notification and consultation requirement under Art. 21 EU Treaty - a requirement which the Presidency meets more ore less as it chooses - it should be answerable in writing on the basis of specific recommendations by the EP, notably in questions of ESDP In Art. 21 EU Treaty, ESDP should be explicitly mentioned (so far, the article refers only to CFPS), and it should also be added that not only the Presidency and the Commission are accountable to the EP but also the High Representative for the CFSP (so far, this results only from the EP's rules of procedure); the appointment of the High Representative for the CFSP should depend on the explicit consent of the European Parliament. The financing of future military EU operations is also an issue relevant to parliamentary control of ESDP. There has recently been a lively debate on this topic, with some Member countries arguing that at least the joint costs of EU operations should be borne jointly, and others taking the view that defence spending for ESDP operations should remain strictly in national hands. A compromise could be reached on 17 June 2002, according to which there will be indeed two categories of costs: joint costs (for staff quarters, medical care and communications for example) and individual costs. As far as transport and accommodation is concerned, decisions are to be taken on a case-by-case basis. In my view it is highly desirable that following an amendment of art. 28 EU (which so far states that military expenditure may not be funded out of the Community budget) these joint costs for military operations within the framework of ESDP should be funded from the Community budget - this already occurs in the civil sphere in the case of police operations - and not from a subsidiary budget of the Member States, as it is being considered at the moment. A "special budget" for military costs would not only leave aside the important aspect of civil and military cooperation and further broaden the gap between the first and the second pillar, it would also be contrary to the principle of parliamentary accountability and democratic control, since a subsidiary budget of this kind could be controlled neither by the national parliaments of the Member States nor by the EP. 8

13 Let me conclude by stressing that the best way to ensure an adequate parliamentary oversight as far as CFSP/ ESDP is concerned is - at least on a long term basis - to overcome the three pillar structure of the European Union and to give a more Community character to the functioning of the CFSP, as it was recently proposed in the Commision's contribution to the Convention. In practice, the Community method involving the Commission's exclusive right of initiative and the generalisation of decisions by qualified majority should more and more apply to the CFSP. The "communitising" of CFSP/ ESDP would considerably strengthen the role of the European Parliament and would be a great step forward as far as parliamentarisation of ESDP is concerned. 9

14 Established in 2000 on the initiative of the Swiss government, the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), encourages and supports States and non-state governed institutions in their efforts to strengthen democratic and civilian control of armed and security forces, and promotes international cooperation within this field, initially targeting the Euro-Atlantic regions. The Centre collects information, undertakes research and engages in networking activities in order to identify problems, to establish lessons learned and to propose the best practices in the field of democratic control of armed forces and civil-military relations. The Centre provides its expertise and support to all interested parties, in particular governments, parliaments, military authorities, international organisations, non-governmental organisations, academic circles. Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF): rue de Chantepoulet 11, P.O.Box 1360, CH-1211 Geneva 1, Switzerland Tel: ; Fax: Website: