During this Colloquy we will be focusing more particularly on the last two points. What better forum to discuss those aspects than a gathering of representatives of the national parliaments? It is, after all, the responsibility of the national parliaments to approve the budget increases needed to improve military capabilities, and as the elected representatives of the member states, they must endorse any ESDP decision at intergovernmental level to send troops into crisis areas. The WEU Assembly offers a unique forum bringing together representatives of the national parliaments of 28 European countries, including all the EU member states and the European NATO members, as well as almost all the EU applicant countries.
The dialogue between the citizens of Europe and their elected representatives is immensely important for bringing Europe closer to its citizens. The WEU Assembly is composed of parliamentarians concerned with security issues, who through the defence committees of the national parliaments are involved in the decisions on defence spending and on sending troops into action. The WEU Assembly has built up a wealth of experience on security issues over many years, which should be taken into proper account by the Convention on Europe's future.
At its June session the Assembly will be discussing a series of reports on ESDP-related issues. Indeed, there is no other parliamentary body at European level which deals so thoroughly with political analysis and opinion-shaping in the field of the ESDP.
This Colloquy is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the requirements of the ESDP. I am therefore happy to welcome, not only many leading representatives from the institutional side, but also a large number of influential representatives of industry, whose analyses, I am sure, will be of great interest to us. Indeed, we need much closer cooperation between the national parliaments and the armaments industry.
I am also happy to see military representatives participating in this Colloquy. We also look forward to their contributions, as the people whose job it is to put political decisions into practice.
This Colloquy, as an integral part of the evolving ESDP, is taking place at a particularly appropriate time, for a number of reasons:
There are two aspects to that competitiveness. Allow me to quote from an interview given on 24 January by Deputy US Secretary of State Armitage, who said that he could imagine a nightmare situation arising in NATO in the not too distant future, if the United States were no longer to be able to supply its European allies with defence technology. The nightmare would be that American aircraft would be flying over the battlefield using their excellent intelligence and communications capabilities, while the Europeans would be tramping around on the battlefield, so to speak at the bottom of the technological spectrum. NATO Secretary-General George Robertson, during an interview with Der Spiegel, warned the United States against unilateralism, but at the same time cautioned the Europeans against encouraging the United States to go it alone by being unreliable allies unable to meet future challenges. He pointed out that, although the European NATO states have two million people in uniform, they have the greatest difficulty with making 50 000 of them available each year for the Balkans. As far as Afghanistan was concerned, he was ashamed for the Europeans. So many countries had proposed to the United States to send troops to Afghanistan, yet they did not have the transport capabilities to get them there.
Former DSACEUR Rupert Smith - who as such was the potential strategic commander of an ESDP mission - recently put forward some striking figures to illustrate this problem. While we Europeans spend US$ 4 000 per soldier per year on research and development, the Americans spend more than six times as much (US$ 26 800). And that gap, rather than narrowing, is likely to widen in the immediate future, judging by the latest round of budget increases in the United States.
Far be it from me to suggest that we try and match the billions of dollars spent by the US on armaments projects. We simply do not have the means to do so. But we can learn from the Americans. I wonder, for example, why we do not put an end to the separation between the budgets for civilian and military research. This would enable our companies to optimise the available research funds.
I do not need to explain to anyone here the link between the research efforts we make today and the capabilities we will have in the future. The ESDP should therefore also take on board research and development in the armaments field. Europe has the requisite scientific basis, but we must give our scientists and industries the financial means to deliver results.
Europe has given an impressive demonstration of its capacities with its recent successful launch of the ENVISAT satellite, a civilian project. The question now is whether we can go a step further and give a new interpretation to the ESA Convention. ESA recently set up a joint working group with officials from the Secretariat of the High Representative for the CFSP, Javier Solana, with the aim of determining what contribution it can make to the ESDP.
We already have a series of institutions working to promote armaments research and coordinate joint projects. Their representatives are here today. Let us muster the political resolve to make use of those institutions! And let us invite others to join in. It is a mistake to believe that results can be achieved by a restricted club. The fragmentation of the European defence industry is a fundamental obstacle that we must surmount.
The EU Military Committee could provide the necessary link in the framework of the ESDP between industry and government policy. It could be tasked with coordinating European R & D efforts, so that in the long term they are geared as closely as possible to the ESDP.
Stronger institutional cooperation among European defence ministers could also contribute to developing a common industrial policy on armaments. I therefore welcome the first separate meeting of EU defence ministers that is to take place under the Spanish Presidency in May. This is a demand that the Assembly has been making for a long time now of governments. Indeed, regular meetings of defence ministers would be conducive to the development of the ESDP and could, in the longer term, lead to the common development of defence budgets in Europe and hence to a common research budget.
We need to consolidate demand at European level in response to the increased consolidation of European industry on the supply side. We have a long road ahead of us, but it could lead to a common European armaments budget. We should make a start by establishing a common research budget.
These days even the bigger European states can only build up the requisite military capabilities at the cost of a major effort. It is obvious at this time of limited budgets that the only way to find the sums needed to enhance capabilities is to rationalise and combine projects. Moreover we can assume that it will not become easier, but on the contrary, increasingly difficult, for countries to take military action on their own.
With the increasing Europeanisation of foreign and security policy, it makes sense not to develop all capabilities individually at national level, but rather to do so in cooperation with other states or even to rely in a spirit of solidarity on European capabilities.
This obviously raises some interesting questions for the role of national defence. At a time when the European Convention is asking what Europe we want for the future and how the tasks are to be shared between the EU and the member states, we are also entitled to ask what role is to be played in all this by security and defence policy. Will the EU, for example, have a mutual assistance clause along the lines of Article V of the modified Brussels Treaty? At yesterday's Presidential Committee meeting we decided to submit our views on this issue to the Convention. The introduction of an Article V into the Treaty on European Union would be the natural consequence of an effort to rationalise and give a multinational dimension to the defence efforts of the EU member states. We cannot have a European security policy which is à la carte. An ESDP without a collective defence commitment would only be half a security policy. No European state should be allowed to say that it will opt out of the first course and partake only of the second.
Now let us address the issue of the capabilities needed for crisis-management operations.
