National Parliamentarians' international caucus on European security ends
If you have been deploring narrowly national deliberations in your legislature when it comes to international security issues, things may get worse soon. To say “it’s Lisbon’s fault” would be way too easy, but there is indeed a connection to the new Treaty governing the European Union. Yet it takes a little detour to connect the dots.
The Lisbon Treaty is mainly hailed for its explicit foreign policy credentials, creating the position of an EU President and a quasi-Foreign Minister, supported by a so-called ‘External Action Service’ (read: Foreign Service). Less prominently, but at least as important in substantial terms, the Treaty contains a clause on mutual assistance: “If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power” (Article 42, 7).
Such an implicit security guarantee in an EU Treaty might be considered revolutionary, as traditionally mutual defence was the prerogative of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the lesser known Western European Union (WEU). While the above-mentioned article still gives prominence to NATO in member states’ defence, it has nonetheless led the ten EU Member States that are also members of the WEU to collectively decide to terminate this organisation by June 2011. The WEU, they dryly say, has accomplished its historical role.
In principle, there would be no reason to shed a single tear for an organisation that had largely ceased to exist in 1999 when the EU took over its crisis management activities as part of the newly founded European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). However, the Assembly of WEU, where national parliamentarians from 39 European countries (both EU and NATO members) convene on a bi-annual basis to discuss security affairs, will also be disbanded. Technically the assembly of a different intergovernmental institution, it also became the body to scrutinise the EU’s ESDP. Consequently, for the past ten years, the re-branded “European Security and Defence Assembly” has provided a forum for political debate by national parliamentarians on the ‘hot and hard’ issues of ESDP such as civilian and military operations, defence procurement and equipment, and non-proliferation and disarmament.
Given that ESDP will remain intergovernmental under the Lisbon Treaty and will thus not fall under the scrutiny of the European Parliament, such inter-parliamentary mechanisms are all the more necessary. True, the new Treaty foresees parliamentary cooperation in one of its Protocols, even referencing explicitly to the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). However, the body put in charge – the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for the Affairs of the Union (COSAC) – usually does not even discuss foreign and security policy. That’s because, at the national level, it is the foreign affairs and defence committees that deal with these issues, not the respective EU committee. In short, the idea that COSAC – in its present form – should replace the Assembly is a non-starter.
National parliamentarians from the foreign affairs and defence committees will now have to come to the fore to (re-)create their own inter-parliamentary assembly at the EU level. They are about to lose most, also because the existing plans for the EU’s External Action Service spare any mention of national parliamentarians becoming involved in the Service’s work (other than indirectly by controlling their national governments). The French Sénateurs have started to debate this issue. Others should follow and create an old-new assembly that preserves the benefits of the WEU’s body – a combination of formal ties to the respective EU institutions and the involvement of non-EU NATO members – while extending the understanding of security from a mainly military focus under WEU to include cross-cutting aspects like energy issues, climate change, or migration. Such an inter-parliamentary congress could provide the democratic control of the EU’s foreign and security policy that the European Parliament is not allowed to exercise, and it would keep the parliamentarians themselves from looking through the national lenses only.
