Downing Street Says » EU Defence

» Tuesday, February 10, 2004

EU Defence

Asked for a reaction to today’s FT splash suggesting that an Anglo-French defence force could be set up, the PMOS said that this idea was nothing new. It had been announced at the Anglo-French Summit last November. The Summit Communiqu\xE9 had stated, “Building on the success of Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we propose a new initiative for the EU to focus on the development of its rapid reaction capabilities to enhance its ability to respond to UN requests in short-term crisis management situations.” In answer to further questions, the PMOS said that it was important to be clear what the proposal was about. It was about identifying the personnel who might take part in initiatives to deal with short-term management crisis situations and making sure that they would know how to work together should the need arise. This was not about permanent capacity. There would, of course, be discussions about this matter in the EU Political and Security Committee. The important thing was to recognise the fact that, as with all aspects of EU defence, the initiative would be complementary to NATO, not in competition with it. Asked what representations had been made to the US about the plan, the PMOS said he did not think that the idea would come as any surprise to the Americans. Questioned as to whether the initiative might involve future peace-making ‘hard-hatted’ tasks, in contrast to the role of the EU Rapid Reaction Force, the PMOS said that that was an over-interpretation of what was being proposed.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.