Texts and Reports
- Development Policy and the Armed Forces - Speeches and Issues Notes
Issues
Note
Michael
Matthiessen
Director
Civilian Crisis Management
External Relations
Council of the European Union, Brussels
Thank
you for inviting me and I think we need some time also for discussion,
so I'll try to be as brief as possible. I have not distributed my speech,
but instead of doing that let me refer you to a very important document
that I'm going to read one or two quotations from, and that is the European
Security Strategy which is also mentioned in some of the material which
has been handed out in this conference. This European Security Strategy
was drafted by my boss, Javier Solana, the High Representative for the
Common Foreign and Security Policy, and adopted by the European Council,
that is by the heads of state and government of all 25 member states
in December last year. I think some of the quotations here will reply
to some of the very important questions that you have asked this panel
to look into. The question of how can a coherent approach be insured
beginning with military peacekeeping and continuing through sustainable
development, examples of successful transitions and - I would pick also
the third question - how are the demands placed on international and
regional actors, including the European Union (EU), changing with regard
to the planning and financing of peace support missions.
One quote from
this European Security Strategy is - and I quote - "In almost every
major intervention, military efficiency has been followed by civilian
chaos. We need greater capacity to bring all civilian resources to bear
in crisis and post-crisis situations." Another quotation: "We
should be able to sustain several operations simultaneously. We could
add particular value by developing operations involving both military
and civilian capabilities." (unquote) And one of the key wordings
of this security strategy is - I would say almost the conclusion - that
the EU needs to be more active, more coherent and more capable. And
I think when we say we need to be more coherent, we are very much addressing
the topic of this conference.
The EU experience
in the military field is still quite limited, when we talk about the
EU as such. However, a number of EU member states - and I would say
a large part of the EU member states - have been involved or are involved
in peacekeeping operations, mostly under the United Nations (UN) or
NATO or in various coalitions of the willing - Shirbrig, Operation Alban,
Albania, etc. etc. But of course, the new development is the ESDP, the
European Security and Defence Policy, which really took off in 1999,
and as you may know, the EU has now had two military operations, both
in 2003, Operation Artemis, which was a bridging operation in Ituri
province in Bunia, in the Democratic Republic of Kongo, and operation
Concordia in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. Very soon, in
December, we are planning to launch our third military operation, Operation
Altea, which we be a huge military operation, when the EU will follow
on to NATO and to the international military presence in Bosnia, and
this will include approximately 7000 troops. In the two cases of military
operations, with Artemis in Bunia and Concordia in FYROM, there has
been very close coordination with our civilian counterparts. I am on
the civilian side, I speak under the control of a colleague from the
EU military staff being here, but I think we can say that we have worked
very closely among the civilian and military actors. Not least in the
case of Artemis, of course, the cooperation was very close with the
Commission - and I'm speaking also on the control of a colleague from
the Commission here - working with our colleagues dealing with humanitarian
assistance, development assistance to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But I would say,
also interesting cooperation was seen in the case of Macedonia, in FYROM,
where we were able to the same day as the military operation closed,
on the 15 of December 2003, we closed down the military operation in
the morning and in the afternoon we opened an EU police mission. And
I think this is an interesting example of the EU having a toolbox. That
the host government in Skopje did not want to have any longer foreign
military troops on their soil because they wanted to get closer to Europe,
closer to NATO, to Partnership for Peace (PFP), but they admitted that
they needed assistance in the field of policing, professional policing,
fight against organized crime, and the EU was able to say the same day
we close down one military operation and the same day we opened a police
mission which is still going on, Operation Proxima, in the former Yugoslav
republic of Macedonia.
Let me mention
that one of our key concepts which we are still working on is something
called CIMCO. And I saw that in some of the papers there was a reference
to CIMIC. And most of us know what CIMIC is but we have tried to develop
something which is broader - civil military coordination where I think
the civilians have had a bit more impact on the definition, because
some of us on the civilian side, I mean we respect CIMIC but we think
that there is more to our cooperation than CIMIC and this is why we
have developed this concept of CIMCO.
Obviously the European
Union is a quite complicated institution - just my title was very long
- we have the Council, the Council Secretariat, the Commission, the
Parliament, we have three pillars etc. But I think in this field also,
when we talk about integrated peace planning or better coordination
it's a question of political will. And I do think that in the cases
I just mentioned in Bunia and in FYROM, it worked well, but of course
it could be improved in the future.
One important element
is of course what happens at headquarter level - and some of you have
mentioned this before in the panel. And I think the planning of this
kind of operations are extremely important. And there I do think that
the European Union, based on lessons learned from other organizations
also, has tried to develop something which is - I wouldn't call it integrated
planning because this is probably a bit too far - but we have really
come, I would say, very close to coordinated planning.
We have a number
of tools. One of them is that we have developed crisis management procedures.
These procedures were mostly developed in the first phase by our military
colleagues who were very inspired by similar procedures at NATO and
the Western European Union (WEU) and it took us some time on the civilian
side to add the civilian components, because of course in the European
Union the military instrument is one out of many, many instruments.
And if you want to do procedures about crisis management from all the
phases from conflict prevention to the real crises to the post-crisis
you need to add all the components. This is why this is a very, very
big document, if you want to have all the actors involved in all the
phases.
Another important
idea in which we have applied in our two military operations is that
we need a concept, a so-called CMC, the Crises Management Concept, which
sets out the parameters for all the actors, so that the military operation
is not seen, let's say in isolation, but in the very broad context of
all the other activities, whether they are political, economic or technical
assistance, and that the military operation is inserted into that broad
concept. The CMC is very important then for the next planning steps,
not least for our military planners when they develop the CONOPS, the
concept of operation, and later the OPLAN by the force commander, all
this is a kind of interpretation, translation of the CMC into more military
terms.
I also think that
we are becoming better and better at looking at time lines. And I think
this an important issue, because - I am sure you have discussed this
earlier - the whole question of time lines for the different actors.
Our military colleagues are always looking at the exit strategy and
when they want to get out of theatre other actors have to be in theatre
in order to continue the work. And very often the time lines are very
different, one in the military field probably rather short, development
assistance quite long and humanitarian assistance somewhere in between.
Our Dutch colleague
mentioned task forces. We have a concept in the EU now called the CRCT
- we love abbreviations like anybody else - the Crisis Response Coordination
Team. This is a task force in Brussels chaired by a civilian - in fact,
at the highest level chaired by Javier Solana, but otherwise delegated
to a director-general - in which all the stakeholders sit around one
table, so the Council Secretariat, the various parts of the Council
Secretariat, the military staff and our colleagues from the Commission.
And such CRCTs have met for all the operations that we have had until
now or that we are planning for the moment. And at the top I would say
with member states we try to ensure the coordination in the PSC, the
Political and Security Committee, where the ambassadors from the 25
member states are sitting, and now this is a committee where ambassadors
are sitting permanently in Brussels and of course Javier Solana as the
High Representative plays a role in the coordination and so does the
Council with the ministers.
If we turn to the
field, as mentioned by others, this is of course also very important
- that the coordination between the various actors, between military
actors and the civilian actors are as coordinated as possible. There
I think we have also foreseen in our procedures, and we have seen it
in our operations, a very important role is given to the EU Special
Representative. And our colleague from the UN mentioned Aldo Ayelo who
is now no longer an SRSG but a EUSR for the Great Lakes. And in fact
Aldo Ayelo was very much involved in operation Artemis in Bunia, and
similarly Alexis Brouhns, who was the EUSR in Skopje, was involved in
the military operation in Macedonia. And in the future Paddy Ashdown
as the EUSR will be involved in the military operation in Bosnia.
One interesting
little element is that for our police operations for which I am responsible
the police head of mission is fully in the, sorry, the EUSR is fully
in the chain of commands. So the police commissioner in Macedonia or
in Bosnia refers to Brussels, to Mr. Solana, through the EU Special
Representative. In the military field the role of the EUSR is not as
clear - we have some wording for the operation in Bosnia that Paddy
Ashdown, Lord Ashdown, can give guidance, but he is not formally in
the chain of command.
So these are the,
let's call it the real operations. Something which I think one should
stress is that we do exercises. We have had three exercises - CME 02,
CMX 03, CME 04 - where we train our crisis management procedures between
military and civilians. I should also add that we invite the UN, NATO
and the OSCE as observers to see how we are doing these exercises. And
we are also now - I would say - applying very systematically lessons
learned to all the operations and all the exercises.
Now how far can
you go in integrated peace planning? As I hinted at, I don't think that
you can get it completely integrated. But we can get much better at
it and we can get - I would say - closely coordinated, but probably
not integrated. One of the reasons is - as others have mentioned - we
are talking about very different cultures, different time perspectives,
the exit strategy for some is the entry strategy for others. Very different
procedures, but we are working on this. Capabilities are different.
Many different stakeholders. And something very concrete: the question
of in which buildings are you working. Every time I go to New York I
go and visit DPKO on one floor, I go to DPA on another floor, but I
have to cross the street to go and visit UNDP.
We have a bit the
same in Brussels. We in the ? structures and our colleagues in the EU
military staff are in one building on Avenue de Cortenbergh. Some of
our colleagues are down in the Justus Lipsius, our colleagues in the
Commission are over in the Charlesmagne and some colleagues dealing
with development assistance and ECO are almost in the suburbs of Brussels
in Rue de Genève. So the whole question of being in different
buildings sometimes is not very conducive to close coordination. But
of course, we do meet.
I think there are
a number of new developments in the EU which could be interesting in
this context. There are some attempts to try to implement some of the
ideas also in the security strategy. Let me mention the first one and
that is that we are going to create now a civil military cell. This
was decided by our heads of state and government, it was very much an
initiative from three large member states, France, UK and Germany, but
this is now EU policy, we are working on it and we are going to have
before the end of the year a cell with military officers and civilians
working on contingency planning, prudent planning and very much based
on the lessons learned that we have until now. As part of the development
of the cell we are also going to have an operation centre which will
also be civil military. This would take a bit longer but it's part of
the same package.
At another level
I would mention the whole development of the constitution which we of
course hope will be ratified by all 25 member states, including in Germany.
As part of the constitution, as you will probably know, there is the
idea of having a foreign minister. So in fact the job that Javier Solana
has today and the job that Chris Patten has today will be merged into
one person who at the same time will be the Vice President of the Commission.
We are also going to have a European External Service so that parts
of the Commission and parts of the Council Secretariat dealing with
various aspects of external service will be merged, hopefully in one
building. And our delegations, or rather the delegations which today
are the Commission delegations, in almost 135 countries around the world
will become kind of EU delegations, almost EU embassies.
So let me stop
there. I think I have given you an attempt to answer some of the questions.
I think I've tried to say that the EU is aware of some of the problems,
that we are working on it. And stress again that in the security strategy
we say, and our heads of state and government are saying we should be
more active, more coherent and more capable. I cannot promise you integrated
peace planning in the EU, but we are trying to get a bit closer to it
than we are today.
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