Strasbourg, 3 June – On Tuesday, the WEU Assembly called upon all the member states to develop their military capabilities in order to restore a balance in transatlantic relations and achieve real complementarity between the European “rapid reaction” headline goal force and the NATO Response Force  (NRF).

In a report submitted on behalf of the Defence Committee on “The EU headline goal and the NATO Response Force”. Mr Dario Rivolta (Forza Italia) hoped that every effort would be made best to avoid sterile competition between EU and NATO forces and to put an end to the artificial divisions between “Europeanists” and “Atlanticists”. Without calling into question the requisite autonomy of EU and NATO structures, it was necessary in his view to emphasise the complementary nature of the EU headline goal and the NATO Rapid Response Force, which  will “require the framing of a common European strategic concept and efforts to restore a balance in transatlantic relations”.

The setting up of the NRF, he said, could in fact be interpreted as symptomatic of the disappointment of our transatlantic allies at Europeans’ paltry efforts. Mr Rivolta also regretted the absence of American troops in the future NRF, as US involvement was desirable in order to achieve greater interoperability between allies.  The Assembly therefore urged the United States to take part in the NRF.

Clarification of EU-NATO relations, in the Assembly’s view, requires an improvement in WEU nations’ military capability “so as to be able to achieve the EU’s headline goal rapidly and set up the NATO Response Force”. The WEU nations are also asked to “participate actively in the structural reform of the Atlantic Alliance, in particular as regards the chain of command” for planned operations. It is also recommended that they “play an active part in the work of the EU” to ensure that the latter has crisis-management structures and military units available at short notice, thereby enabling a core of headline goal forces to be capable of “rapid reaction”. During the debate, Mr Helmut Rauber (Germany-CDU/CSU) made the point that in order to make sure there was no repetition of the Iraq tragedy, Europe had to have the political and military means of making its voice heard without losing sight of the fact that the aim must continue to be to act in concert with the United States.

Finally, the report expresses the view that there cannot be complementarity between the NRF and European capabilities without close political cooperation between the Alliance and the EU, based on genuine equality and firm partnership.