Paris, 2 December—Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said on Tuesday that the mutual defence clause in the European Union (EU) constitution currently under negotiation should enhance political solidarity, not create a new military alliance.

If Finland were in need of a military security guarantee, it would turn to NATO, which remains the only option for Europe, he told reporters. After meeting French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, he said that France understood the reasons for the Scandinavian proposal for a mutual defence clause that ruled out an automatic military response to a threat.

He said EU ministers would again review the different proposals on structured cooperation and mutual defence in the margins of the next EU-NATO meeting on Thursday. Mr Tuomioja believes all member states should be able to participate in security and defence cooperation, however he acknowledged that some countries were determined to introduce structured cooperation. If the idea prevails, participation should be based on qualitative and not quantitative criteria, he said.

Addressing the Assembly, Mr Tuomioja said he was disappointed that decisions under the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which is to incorporate the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), would not be taken by qualified majority vote (QMV).

As to a parliamentary dimension to the CFSP, he said that parliamentary scrutiny was extremely important, but that an intergovernmental arrangement should be left aside for the moment. “We are not at a stage where we can create new institutions in the Constitution, but this is an aspect that will evolve considerably in the future”, he said.

In his speech, Mr Tuomioja said that the meaning of common defence was not clear and asked if it implied a European army, or responsibility for UK and French nuclear weapons, and what its relationship with NATO would be.

Although proposals on the controversial articles 40.6 and 40.7 of the draft Constitution, presented by France, Germany and the UK at the Naples IGC meeting last weekend, were widely approved, the Minister noted that it was not a good idea for structured cooperation to become “a closed shop, where those who join initially will later decide among themselves who may not join later.”

However much flexibility is built in to the EU’s crisis response capability, there will “inevitably remain two red lines that cannot be crossed”, he said. “Committing forces to operations has to be approved by each member state – in Finland’s case by our parliament – and we cannot allow a group of countries to use the EU ‘trademark’ without a mandate from the Union as a whole”.