Skip to main content
ad info

 
Middle East Asia-pacific Africa Europe Americas
CNN.com    world > europe world map
  Editions | myCNN | Video | Audio | Headline News Brief | Feedback  

 

  Search
 
 

 
WORLD
TOP STORIES

Thousands dead in India; quake toll rapidly rising

Israelis, Palestinians make final push before Israeli election

Gates pledges $100 million for AIDS

Davos protesters face tear gas

(MORE)

TOP STORIES

Thousands dead in India; quake toll rapidly rising

Israelis, Palestinians make final push before Israeli election

Davos protesters face tear gas

(MORE)

MARKETS
4:30pm ET, 4/16
144.70
8257.60
3.71
1394.72
10.90
879.91
 


U.S.

POLITICS

LAW

TECHNOLOGY

ENTERTAINMENT

HEALTH

TRAVEL

FOOD

ARTS & STYLE



(MORE HEADLINES)
*
 
CNN Websites
Networks image


Europe bites bullet with defence force

NATO attack in Yugoslavia
NATO firepower in Yugoslavia: Now NATO's role with Europe is changing  

European leaders are set to take a vital step towards the creation of a Rapid Reaction Force of up to 60,000 personnel.

At a Capability Commitment Conference in Brussels on Monday, European Union nations will pledge troops to the new RRF and discuss how to make it viable.

The EU's first military initiative was driven by France and Britain, the EU's two major military powers.

Despite reservations by non-NATO members, EU leaders agreed at the Helsinki summit last December to establish the force to resolve conflicts, perform peacekeeping duties and humanitarian and rescue work.

Many EU leaders were horrified by the time it took for Europe to assemble an adequate force for Kosovo last year and how dependent they remained on the U.S. Only a third of the air sorties flown in the Kosovo campaign were by European aircraft.

At Helsinki the leaders pledged to have the new force up and running by 2003. But worries remain about the political will and the military capacity to achieve this.

A 60,000-strong force that can stay in place for up to a year requires a pool of about 240,000 military personnel.

Most EU nations have cut defence spending in the post Cold War years. There are problems too over standardisation of equipment and the force's relationship with NATO.

France has indicated it will provide about 10-20,000 troops and Britain about 18,000.

Other initial pledges are expected to be: Germany 18,000, Italy and Spain 6,000, Belgium and the Netherlands 3,000, Austria and Sweden 2,000, Portugal 1,000.

UK and Scandinavian ministers are making plain the new force will not be a European Union standing army.

Britain's Defence Minister, Geoff Hoon, said: "No European army, no European cap badges, no European flags -- a British contribution to European co-operation, firmly under British control and deployed at the behest of a British minister."

Contributing units will remain under national control and there will not be a standard uniform.

The RRF will not be controlled by the European Commission but by the European Council, on which the heads of government across the EU sit. The commission says it will work "in association" with the new body.

Javier Solana, the so-called "High Representative" of the EU -- in effect its foreign policy supreme -- is working on the command structure and seeking to ease the worries of countries like Turkey, currently in NATO but not in the EU, that they will be squeezed out of future decisions on European security.

What about NATO?

The Brussels meeting will essentially be about military commitments and seeing if the EU countries are ready to mount the new force.

A political agreement to formalise the arrangements with NATO will follow, perhaps at the Nice Euro summit on December 7.

Disagreements centre on conditions for the force using NATO technology, command centres and military intelligence.

The Americans, the prime force in NATO, have long complained about Europe's failure to pull its weight over peace-keeping duties.

But once the new plans began to emerge there were warning noises from Washington about a potential duplication and undermining of NATO.

EU diplomats say that Washington is now more relaxed. One French source told CNN: "Their feeling now is: 'Please do it -- if you can.'"

Some in Europe fear a steady U.S. pullback from Europe and a weakening of American commitment to NATO. Washington provides much of NATO's more sophisticated technology and its larger scale military transport.

After the Kosovo conflict, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, highly critical of European "dithering and disunity" on that occasion, joined French President Jacques Chirac in expressing a need for Europe to stand on its own when the U.S. chose not to get involved.

But Blair says NATO must remain the lead organisation in Europe's defence.

The position is complicated by the fact that some EU countries, like Austria, Sweden and Ireland, are traditionally neutral in military terms.

Also, Norway, Iceland and Turkey -- like the U.S. and Canada -- are in NATO. And Austria, Finland, Sweden and Ireland are in the EU but not in NATO. NATO members will be given a say on any RRF operation involving NATO personnel or equipment.

But Europe's forces need more funding. Hoon said: "Too many look much as they did during the Cold War and are rarely flexible enough to carry out a diverse range of crisis management tasks."

Collectively the EU countries spend some $190 million on defence every year compared with Washington's $290 billion.



RELATED STORY:
In depth: Changing face of Europe

RELATED SITES:
European Union
NATO

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

 Search   

Back to the top  © 2001 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.