Paris, 7 December – The WEU Assembly came out in favour of close political cooperation between the EU and NATO, based on genuine equality, firm partnership and abiding mutual respect.
 
On the basis of a report on “Cooperation in the operational area between the EU and NATO – reply to the annual report of the Council”, submitted by Mr Jean-Pierre Kucheida (France, Socialist Group) on behalf of the Defence Committee, the Assembly considered that political and operational cooperation between the EU and NATO should extend beyond the framework formalised by the 2003 Berlin plus agreements, under which inter alia NATO assets could be made available to the EU. Stressing that “the European Union is a long-term political project which includes the framing of a common defence policy which might lead to a common defence”, the Assembly considers that it is desirable to “draw up in consultation with NATO a defence strategy for the European Union to supplement the European Security Strategy, while preserving the EU’s decision-making and operational autonomy”. The Assembly also considers that the time has come to “envisage the establishment of a framework for dialogue and cooperation on security and defence between the European Union and the United States in order to deal with common threats, without prejudice to the role of NATO as a collective defence alliance among certain European States and the United States”.
 
Submitting his report, Mr Kucheida noted that NATO-EU cooperation, a practical example of which was the Althea operation in Bosnia, was not without problems associated with conflicts of interest, differences of objective, and questions of competition, problems that also arise in the context of relations between the United States and Europe. As the separate but simultaneous operations conducted by NATO and the EU in Sudan have shown, the EU “is investing all the means (financial, humanitarian, social and economic, military, police assistance etc.) that are needed to stabilise the situation”, whereas NATO “can provide a military presence, for this is the field in which it is effective”.
 
“There can be no doubt,” he said, “that political Europe is embodied by the European Union, in spite of all its shortcomings and divisions, and that increasingly in the future the Union will be relied upon to create a better balance in the field of international relations”. But, he added, even if this “gives the EU a considerable political and diplomatic advantage over NATO”, the two organisations must draw closer to each other. In his view, there can be no effective complementarity without close political cooperation between the Alliance and the EU.