(Bloomberg) -- The European Union unveiled proposals for joint military and security operations that it said won't duplicate the role of NATO but would enable the region to be less reliant on the U.S. amid questions over President Donald Trump's commitment to the trans-Atlantic alliance.
In a wide-ranging options paper published on Wednesday, the European Commission floated the possibility of the bloc launching operations against terrorist groups and working with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in areas such as maritime and cyber security.
“We are not suggesting in any way to substitute, duplicate, or compete with NATO,” EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini told reporters in Brussels. “On the political side, what we can do is to encourage our American friends to stay engaged in the global scene.”
Calls for stronger defense cooperation between European states have gained momentum as disagreements between Trump and the EU over trade, climate change, and military spending have strained the world's closest political and economic alliance. In a speech in Brussels last month, Trump failed to explicitly endorse Art. 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which commits members to collective self defense.
‘Evolving' Relationships
The commission also announced a defense fund that would allocate as much as 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) per year after 2020 for the development of prototypes and the acquisition of equipment and technology. The fund would also seek to leverage national financing that could bring total investment to 5 billion euros per year, according to a statement.
“I welcome the EU decision to launch a European Defense Fund which is an opportunity to further enhance NATO-EU cooperation,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Twitter.
The U.K.'s withdrawal from the bloc removes the largest obstacle to EU military co-ordination. Brexit, together with Trump's ambiguous attitude toward Russia and the defense of Europe, means that many in the EU believe that the time is right to start the initiative.
The plans to “foster closer cooperation on defense and security are not about creating an EU army or unnecessarily duplicating military planning and command structures that currently exist at national level and in NATO,” the European Commission said in a statement on its website. It added though that the “nature of the trans-Atlantic relationship is evolving.”
It will still be up to the EU's leaders and governments to decide how they want the bloc's defense cooperation to develop. The commission outlined three proposals for the period leading to 2025 in its reflection paper:
- In the first scenario, European Union member states would cooperate on security and defense more frequently than in the past, though such cooperation would remain largely voluntary and depend on ad-hoc decisions as and when a new threat or crisis emerges.
- In the second scenario, the EU would move toward shared security and defense, showing far greater financial and operational solidarity, and boosting the bloc's ability to project military power and engage fully in external crisis management.
- According to the more ambitious “common defense and security” scenario, the protection of “Europe would become a mutually reinforcing responsibility of the EU and NATO.”
The last scenario envisages that the EU would be in a position to run high-end operations including those against terrorist groups and naval operations in hostile environments. The option also lays the ground for a European military, in the form of “pre-positioned permanently available forces” for rapid deployment “on behalf of the union,” as well as a European border and coast guard relying on joint intelligence assets, such as remotely piloted aircraft systems or satellites.
--With assistance from Nikos Chrysoloras
To contact the reporters on this story: Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net, Viktoria Dendrinou in Brussels at vdendrinou@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Nikos Chrysoloras
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