Paris 6 December –  tef Goris, outgoing President of the WEU Assembly, has called for a permanent forum of EU national parliamentarians to be created in Brussels to discuss security and defence and other issues of common interest.
 
In his opening address to the 51st plenary session of the Assembly on 5 December, he said all attempts so far to remedy the democratic deficit in European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) had failed, even though no-one contested its existence. “If ESDP were to come under the Community pillar, sharing decision-making with the European Parliament, national parliaments would still want to have their say,” he maintained. “A deadline should be set (…), let us say 10 years. By then we will be able to take stock of the European Union’s progress and see whether there is a better solution for guaranteeing the participation of the national parliaments in European policy and the ESDP in particular.”
 
Mr Goris had harsh words to say on the subject of European governments’ failure to integrate the whole of WEU into the EU. The result was that WEU had "fallen prey to shameful political euthanasia. What has suffered most is the democratic legitimacy of the decisions on security policy taken by the EU governments in Brussels”, he said. “This means that national parliamentarians have been deprived of their right to be informed and consulted by governments on crisis-management and armaments cooperation”, he added.
 
Another negative effect was that WEU’s intergovernmental dialogue, which provided the link between European and North American NATO members, had “been reduced to a purely vegetative state”. “The generally harmonious relations that existed between WEU and NATO have been replaced by a degree of antagonism; rivalry even, between the EU and NATO”, he noted.
 
Shortfalls remained in civil and military defence capabilities. This was why the European Defence Agency was “under considerable pressure to produce results fast”. The concept of the WEU’s Petersberg missions was “being put into practice, but without much conviction”. Only a few countries were “making serious preparations for (…) high-intensity combat operations aimed at putting a stop to violent conflicts. Other solutions are generally preferred”.
 
Even so, Mr Goris said, a substantive dialogue had developed between the WEU Assembly and the EU “thanks to the double-hatting of the ambassadors to the WEU”, and there was a growing awareness of “the need to discuss security decisions with national parliamentarians; due in particular to the growing complexity of the EU’s civil and military operations”.
 
Now that the adoption of the EU Constitutional Treaty had stalled, WEU “could be the vehicle for a solution to the EU’s current institutional crisis, in the form of structured cooperation in the area of security and defence”, he said. “However, although this would make up for certain shortcomings of the Constitutional Treaty – in particular the way in which its pseudo mutual defence clause is worded; because it only makes provision for non-binding solidarity – governments are unlikely to opt for such a solution; which would be tantamount to admitting that they no longer believe themselves capable of any further progress in this area of EU policy.”
 
The EU had made the best use of WEU’s pre-preparatory work on crisis-management, Mr Goris said. “A whole new process has been launched. The EU has very rapidly acquired the capacity to conduct its first civil and military missions, and is currently involved in a number of operations in Europe, Africa and Asia”.