ESDP in action

Dr. Antonio Missiroli

Research Fellow, EU-ISS, Paris

I. ESDP only became truly “operational” - after three years of institutional and organisational preparations – with the start of the European Union Police Mission (EUPM) in Bosnia and Herzegovina in January 2003. The operation was established by the General Affairs Council on 11 March 2002 (Joint Action 2002/210/CFSP) in order to take over from the UN-run International Police Task Force (IPTF), which had provided policing services in the country for the previous seven years. The aim of EUPM, due to last up to three years, is to support the local authorities in developing their police forces to the highest European and international standards through monitoring, mentoring and inspecting the management and operating of the police [1]. The EUPM involves around 900 staff including 500 police officers, 50 international civilian experts and more than 300 local personnel. The majority thereof has been seconded by the 15 member States as well as 18 ‘third’ States participating in the mission [see Table 1 below]. EUPM’s overall annual costs amount to EUR 38 million, of which member States cover 18 million through secondments of staff while the EU budget (B-7 line) covers the EUR 20 million running costs [see Table 2 below]. The EUR 4 million start-up costs (including equipment and the planning team) had already been funded - as mentioned above - from juggling different chapters in the 2002 EU budget. Further EUR 1.7 million ‘start-up’ allocations were added through a 27 February 2003 amendment to the relevant Joint Action.

From an exclusively budgetary perspective, therefore, the launch and the implementation of EUPM show how much more practical it is for the Union to put in place civilian crisis management operations rather than ‘mixed’ or purely military ones. Following on the experience made first with Mostar then with other CFSP actions since, EUPM also proves that member States end up - in spite of the intergovernmental rhetoric that often dominates the general discussion on the common foreign and security policy – resorting to the EU budget, albeit mostly by default: this time, at least, they have done it in a much more transparent manner than before. Given also the limited amount of hardware necessary for such operations, the only area in which member States step in directly is the per diems of their seconded personnel.

Table 1: EUPM - Participating personnel by country

Source: EU Council

Table 2: EUPM - COSTS

Source: EU Council

II. The launch of ‘Concordia’ in FYROM – the Union’s first ever common military operation – has been much more complicated. On the ground, the EU was active through a series of Community programmes (especially CARDS) and other instruments, most importantly the Stabilisation and Association Agreement signed by FYROM in the spring of 2001. It was also represented through the Commission Delegation and, since 2001, a CFSP “special representative” (presently the Belgian diplomat Alexis Brouhns). The implementation of the Ohrid Agreement signed by the two local communities in August 2001 and the ensuing UN SC resolution 1371 included both the EU and NATO among the multilateral institutions expected to help enforce it. Ever since, the military element of the international peace-building effort had been ensured by NATO, first with Operation ‘Amber Fox’ then, once the tensions between Macedonian Slavs and Albanians started to abate, with the smaller ‘Allied Harmony’.

The Union had already manifested its willingness to take over the mission from the Alliance in the summer of 2002. The plan was to run a EU-led follow-on operation with recourse to NATO planning capabilities. This is precisely the kind of format envisaged in the so-called “Berlin-plus” framework. At that time, however, the tentative arrangement reached on that between the Union and the Alliance in December 2001 remained blocked inside NATO, mainly by Turkish demands that could not be entirely met by the EU [2].

It was only towards the end of 2002 - after the surprising outcome of the November 3 elections in Turkey and before the Copenhagen European Council set to deliberate over the enlargement process – that Ankara eventually accepted the broad terms of the deal and made it possible to proceed with the “devolution” of military crisis management in FYROM. Therefore, the EU-internal preparations for what would become ‘Concordia’ went hand in hand with the technical refinement of the ‘Berlin-plus’ agreement between the Union and the Alliance, in what was to become a première for both. The relatively small size of the operation made the exercise much easier and, after FYROM President Boris Trajkovski extended the invitation to the EU, eventually led to the Council Joint Action 2003/92/CFSP that launched it on 27 January 2003.

Accordingly, ‘Concordia’ would take over from NATO’s ‘Allied Harmony’ – an operation that, like ‘Amber Fox’, was already conducted by overwhelmingly European forces – from 31 March 2003. Its initial duration is six months. Operation Commander, in line with the ‘Berlin-plus’ agreement, is Deputy SACEUR Admiral Rainer Feist, supported by NATO headquarters guarded by a 40-strong Hungarian contingent. Force Commander on the ground is Brigadier-General Pierre Maral, with France acting as ‘framework nation’ for the entire mission. Of the approx. 350 staff involved in the EU mission, 90 per cent comes from 13 member States (exceptions are Ireland and, by virtue of its special exemption clause, Denmark) and the rest from as many as 14 ‘third’ countries, although Canada may withdraw its participation [see Table 3 below].

Table 3: ‘CONCORDIA’ - Participating personnel by country (357 overall)

* Framework nation
Source: EU Council

As for the financing, the overall budget for six months amounts to EUR 6.2 million (the initial allocation was 4.7 million). The participating member States bear, of course, all related “individual” costs. They also cover the “common” costs – as from the deal struck at the Seville European Council in June 2002, but this time including also, upon unanimous decision, barracks and lodging for the forces as a whole - through an ad-hoc “financial mechanism” based on the GDP scale. As for the participating ‘third’ countries, another ad-hoc scheme was created whereby they cover 15.5 per cent of the “common” costs according to a ‘key’ that takes into account their GDP but adjusts it by setting a minimum (2 per cent) and a maximum (25 per cent) threshold [see Table 4 below].

Table 6: ‘CONCORDIA’ - Costs

Source : EU Council

Participating third countries’ contribution to the total common costs

III. Both EUPM and ‘Concordia’ have been planned and launched with the explicit intention of a) giving, at last, a tangibly operational dimension to ESDP, b) putting to test the arrangements adopted so far, and c) creating precedents and learning lessons with a view to future and presumably larger missions. Their relatively small size, low intensity and (especially for ‘Concordia’) short duration, however, can hardly represent a yardstick for the possible takeover of NATO’s SFOR after 2004 - an operation started as early as 1996 which still engages roughly 12,000 soldiers on the Bosnian ground. Its order of magnitude and foreseeable challenges may, in fact, require a realistic and agreed framework also from the financial viewpoint. Such a framework must be as sustainable, fair and transparent as possible, and meet the diverse demands made by the (present and future) member States. In turn, the launch of the UN-mandated Operation ‘Artemis’ in the Democratic Republic of Congo – with France, again, playing the role of “framework nation” - raises a further set of questions, most notably those related to strategic lift, in-theatre mobility and communication, and cooperation with a fairly different group of ‘third’ countries. There is also talk of a EU peace-keeping mission with Russia in Moldova, although this remains a mere consideration at present.

In the light of the experience gained so far, four main problems come to the fore regarding the institutional and material underpinning of EU-led operations. The first one regards speed and readiness: when the Union decides on a mission, it is paramount to be able to resort to stand-by financial and operational resources that can be mobilised and employed/deployed quickly. To this end, the Commission has set up the Rapid Reaction Mechanism. The Council can only resort to emergency reserves that are limited and subject to lengthy procedures. Hence the growing demand for a special “start-up” fund that could encompass both cash (in the form of down-payments to be reimbursed later) and logistics-related matériel (as ‘inherited’ from previous operations and/or acquired off-the-shelf). Such a demand was raised in the Final Report of Working Group on Defence of the Convention on the Future of Europe in December 2002, and has since been incorporated in the relevant draft articles submitted in April 2003 by the Convention’s Presidium [3].

A second problem regards, instead, long-term sustainability. ‘Concordia’ is too short and ‘light’ to constitute a significant precedent for ESDP operations: it has mainly a symbolic value, which justifies the disproportionately large list of participating countries (up to 27 for a 350-strong contingent). EUPM has a longer life span and, for a civilian police operation, is not that small – yet is tiny if compared to SFOR. More generally, sizeable peace-building operations often tend to have hardly predictable time horizons: in order to be effective and credible, they should not be held hostage to inter-institutional turf battles in Brussels or lengthy parliamentary procedures in the member States. Hence the need for a more durable and transparent budgetary framework for EU-led crisis management operations, capable of overcoming the drawbacks of the current ‘ad hocery’ and as independent of national interests and contingencies as possible.

Related to this is the problem of coherence. EUPM is purely civilian, ‘Concordia’ purely military. However, it is likely that future ESDP operations be rather ‘mixed’, encompassing more than one dimension. This is also in line with the Union’s ambition to become a fully-fledged international actor endowed with the whole gamut of policy tools required for crisis management. With the possible takeover of SFOR, in fact, the EU would already find itself in charge of a large ‘mixed’ operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. From a functional as well as financial viewpoint, such a prospect raises the question of the necessary coherence between different budgetary sources and operating modalities (let alone competencies), all of which need to be addressed.

Last but not least, a problem of burden-sharing among the member States may also arise. At present, in fact, the GDP-based ‘key’ of contributions applies both to the EU budget as such and, failing different arrangements agreed unanimously, to any additional operating expenditure to be borne by participating countries (including the “common costs” for military missions). As a result, the bigger member States tend to carry the lion’s share of the ESDP burden [see Table 5 and Figure 1 below]. On top of that, they also happen to be those who, more often than not, provide most of the personnel for operations, thus paying twice or thrice (B-7/B-8 lines, “common” and individual costs) for the same action. Such extra burden, however, is not matched by any special status in terms of decision-making. Nor is it a secret that Germany, in particular, has become very wary of any additional expenditure to be covered through the GDP-based ‘key’. Much as the European construction is based on budgetary solidarity and translated into significant financial transfers, the imbalance is particularly striking here and may generate all the wrong incentives. Finally, such imbalance is bound to increase further with enlargement in that the acceding countries have both smaller GDPs and fewer capabilities. For the time being, they have a clear political incentive to participate in EU-led operations. Once in the Union, they will have a seat at the decision-making table but no obligation to join in costly missions they may not afford to undertake. They may also become interested in resorting to the “qualified abstention” enshrined in art.23 TEU - although, to date, no single EU member has ever done so.

Table 5: Official GDP-based shares of contribution to the EU budget (2003)

Figure 1: GDP-based contributions to the EU budget (2003)

All these potential problems may well require adjustments to the existing rules and procedures for financing future EU-led crisis management operations. The June 2004 review of the “common costs” arrangement and, above all, the impending deliberations of the Convention and the ensuing Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) are excellent opportunities to do that properly.

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