Projev ministra obrany v Evropském parlamentu - Evropská obrana jako pilíř NATO

Ve středu 24. června vystoupil v Evropském parlamentu ministr obrany Martin Stropnický. Celý jeho projev v angličtině je zde k dispozici.

“Europe has never been so prosperous, so secure nor so free. The violence of the first half of the 20th Century has given way to a period of peace and stability unprecedented in European history.”

No, I am not lunatic. I just quoted the opening paragraph of the European Security Strategy that is still in force and that should provide the EU with key principles and guidelines for developing its defence and security capabilities.

It is clear that this document, adopted back in 2003, is no longer able to meet this purpose and that we now live in very different times. The fact that we haven’t been able to keep the European Union’s basic strategic document up to date speaks volumes about our political will and readiness to tackle security threats head-on.

Any debate on improving our collective defence and security capacities, let alone on establishing common European Army, must start with frank examination of how we, both nationally and as the Union, react to unfavourable reality – whether we are ready to lead the way and make unpopular but necessary decisions, or whether we postpone crucial steps indefinitely and hope that problems will sort out themselves. The current immigration crisis is a good case study and I will come back to it later.

Longing for a unified European defence capacity (or the “European Army”) has been around almost since the very beginning of European integration. The recent revival of the idea by President Juncker is mostly based on recycling the language that had been used many times before.

The key difference now, compared to the past, is the strategic context in which the debate unfolds. We are indeed in the most complicated security situation in decades. We face a confusing array of traditional and new, conventional and unconventional threats. They are closely interlinked to create a “ring of fire” surrounding Europe in the East, Southeast and South.

What was new in President Juncker’s March statement was that he explicitly linked the idea of developing an integrated “European Army” with the need to deter Russia. This is a positive shift because it connects the debate on a more autonomous European defence with existing threats, rather than with abstract aspirations to Europe’s global greatness, as was usually the case in the past.

Our debate can thus be much more rational than previously. If you remember the 1990s, discussions on developing European defence capacities were heavily loaded with anti-American sentiments. The main motivation was establishing the European Union as a global military player which would be able to balance the power of the United States.

Fortunately, this is long behind us and almost nobody in Europe suffers from such dangerous illusions today. When President Juncker and others speak about the need to establish a common European military or to create a European Defence Union, their motivations are much more practical.

One such motivation is trying to spend our limited resources more efficiently by eliminating redundancies stemming from the fact that our countries maintain separate militaries. Another motivation is that we should assume greater responsibility for our own defence and security as the United States is busier with confronting security challenges elsewhere around the globe.

These motivations are legitimate but, frankly, they are not new. They have formed the cornerstone of practical multinational defence cooperation in both the EU and NATO for the past 15 years. This means that, on the one hand, there has been a real progress since the 1990s in the sense that we no longer taint our debate on Europe’s common defence by anti-American sentiments.

On the other hand, we haven’t progressed much on the crucial question of whether our defence should be based on intergovernmental or supranational solutions. That is the core of the debate today.

To put the dilemma bluntly: Should we more efficiently pool and share our national defence assets in order to save money and increase our collective capacities, while these assets would stay under full control of national governments? Or should we create supranational defence assets owned and financed by the European Union and controlled by EU’s supranational bodies? Or is there a compromise possible, combining both approaches?

I believe that our attempts at answering these questions should be firmly rooted in reality and in what is practically possible. We should refrain from framing the debate into excessively abstract thinking based on what we would do if the world was perfect.

It is desirable and also practically achievable to support the ever closer cooperation and coordination among our countries in the area of defence and security with the aim to spend our limited defence budgets more efficiently, to boost our collective defence capacities, to increase interoperability, and to reduce unnecessary duplications.

I hope that this gradual process, which has been under way for many years now, will eventually lead to the creation of a supranational “European Army.” At the same time, it is clear that the bulk of military assets in Europe will remain under national control for many years to come. However, we don’t need to just wait passively. We should start integrating, step by step, at least some specific defence capabilities to make them common EU assets (such as CBRN, cyber, surveillance, and airlift).

We should patiently keep doing our homework, by which I mean implementing all those initiatives, projects and activities aimed at bringing us closer together in defence. Attempts at circumventing this gradual and often unsuccessful effort smack of utopia and may end up in disaster. There are many activities going on that are vital for deepening our cooperation before we can realistically think of creating truly supranational assets:

• Nations develop joint rapid reaction forces in both the EU and NATO.
• There are several regional groupings in Europe (Benelux, Visegrád Group, NORDEFCO) engaged in cooperation across the entire spectrum of defence agenda, including formation of joint multinational units.
• There are multinational programs to share expensive defence assets, such as airlift.
• Across Europe, key defence capabilities are being developed and used jointly, particularly when it comes to navies and air defences.
• We train and exercise together, thus increasing interoperability between our armed forces.
• The European Defence Agency coordinates developing key strategic enablers Europe lacks (drones, air-to-air refuelling, cyber, satellites).
• We affiliate our units to multinational corps headquarters, such as those in Szczecin and Münster.
• There are initiatives such as Smart Defence, Pooling & Sharing, and the Framework Nations Concept.
• We exchange information on our national defence planning on a regular basis in order to identify opportunities for joint procurement.
• Our defence industries are closely interlinked across national borders.

No, I am not painting a rosy picture of the less than satisfactory reality. I know that many of these initiatives are more about talking than about doing. Many of them are lagging behind expectations. Some of them are quite openly failing. But my point is that the solution is not about simply discarding them and rushing to create a supranational European Army, for which there is a clear lack of political will and popular support.

In this and many other issues, there is a general lack of leadership in the EU. Another good example is the current immigration crisis. The EU’s reaction to it has almost narrowed to the debate about introducing mandatory national quotas for accepting asylum seekers. But this is just a small part of the problem. We spend a huge amount of our time and energy discussing a few dozen thousand asylum seekers when Europe faces millions of immigrants from areas affected by violence and poverty.

According to estimations, there are now at least 25 million people trying to get to Europe. In Africa alone, there are 650 million people living for less than 2 U.S. Dollars per day. The absorption capacity of Europe is a fraction of these numbers. We are facing a full-fledged crisis but instead of bold and comprehensive response, we are preoccupied with small details and at best partial solutions.

Here I would like to rebuff the stereotype that immigration concerns the Southern and Western European members of the EU only and that the central European countries are unwilling to contribute to sharing the burden. It is not true. Currently, there are almost half a million of foreigners legally living in the Czech Republic and at least several hundred thousand illegal immigrants on top of that. Taken together, immigrants represent between 5 and 10 per cent of our population. That’s certainly not negligible.

Over the past two decades, we have accepted and, by-and-large, integrated more than one hundred thousand Ukrainians, almost one hundred thousand Slovaks and roughly sixty thousand Vietnamese. Since the conflict erupted in Eastern Ukraine early last year, several dozen thousand of Ukrainians, both legally and illegally, immigrated to the Czech Republic. We do share the burden!

Going back to our common defence, we must do much more to promote the gradual merging of our defence policies and assets. Bringing the EU and NATO closer together should be a priority. EU Battlegroups on the one hand and the reformed NATO Response Force on the other hand should be better harmonised, including their certification requirements.

In the European Union alone, we have plenty of opportunities for what to do. We should increase common financing of at least some elements of the CSDP, such as building and certifying the Battlegroups. We should adopt financial incentives to promote research and development in defence technologies. EDA’s “flagship” projects in joint capabilities development are far from being completed.

We don’t even have a dedicated “Defence Affairs Council” where EU defence ministers would meet autonomously of the foreign affairs colleagues and would adopt their own Conclusions. It should be established as soon as possible to give more visibility to the defence agenda in the EU.

Last but not least, we may indeed think about establishing supranational defence assets, owned by the European Union. Let’s start with specific areas such as cyber defence and CBRN protection. In such a gradual way, we may, after some time, arrive to the “European Army.”