Paris, 24 January 2002.- Speaking at the GPC International Conference on European defence R&D in Brussels on 24 January 2002, WEU Assembly President,  Klaus Bühler MdB drew attention to an Assembly report which concluded that there was not so much a technological gap between Europe and the United States as a gap in terms of capabilities and budgets, which in turn was the result of a “political gap”. Citing the US missile defence programme as an example, he said, “Europeans will have no other choice but to keep up, or find themselves lagging behind”. 
 
Military R&D spending was very unequal among EU member states and its overall level inconsistent with the needs of the emerging European Security and Defence Policy. Although promoting a strong European industrial and scientific defence base was a major goal, cooperation with the US and other countries should also be considered as a prime objective whenever there was a will to share technologies. 
 
There was a need to draw up a joint vision of the way forward in defence R&D and a common European fund to supply the financial resources for research activities in the most crucial technological areas such as communications, guidance and control systems, sensor systems, signature control and signature reduction or else personnel protection. “The scientific potential is there, all we need to do is to make use of it”. 
 
President Bühler called for a strengthening of the structures of WEAG (the 19 nations Western European Armaments Group based in Brussels) and the Western European Armaments Organisation (WEAO) with a view to creating a European Armaments Agency at long last. He deplored the fact that after many years of difficult but steady progress, defence ministers now seemed to lack the resolve to move ahead within the truly European framework of WEAO. 
 
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