NATO SECRETARY general Anders Fogh Rasmussen has called for greater co-operation between the EU and the military alliance to offer greater security in a time of budget austerity.
Opening the Munich security conference, Mr Rasmussen criticised European governments for using the cover of the economic crisis to accelerate cuts in defence spending, a trend he said “endangered the security on which democratic societies are based”.
“A strong Nato partnership with the EU would deliver many benefits in political and operational terms as well as financially. I sincerely hope Nato and the EU will intensify practical co-operation,” said Mr Rasmussen to an international audience of heads of state and diplomats.
“Nato and the EU share 21 members, each one of them only has one set of armed forces and one set of capabilities. Let’s get the most out of it.” Once again the Munich conference, now in its 47th year, has attracted the cream of the international scene.
Chancellor Angela Merkel will this morning greet US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, who will use Munich as a stage to ratify the Start nonproliferation treaty.
As the conference discussed cybersecurity and the consequences of the financial market crisis, organisers scrambled to stage a discussion today on Egypt.
Unfolding events there and elsewhere in the Middle East were, for Mr Rasmussen, proof that “tectonic plates are shifting” and an example of why defence spending should be maintained.
A decade ago, he said, the US accounted for a half of Nato total defence spending whereas now it contributes 75 per cent.
Europe “cannot afford to get out of the security business”, Mr Rasmussen said, warning the US might, in that case, look elsewhere for a new security partner.
It was a message picked up on by German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, who said that tighter military co-operation in the EU is the key for the continent be taken seriously as a global player.
Combining EU civil and military policy abroad, he said, ensured the union had a “modern instrument for dealing with crisis and conflict” around the world.
“If Europe wants to pay in the concert of old and new powers, there is no way past deeper integration,” he said, urging the union to act on new military co-operation provisions in the Lisbon Treaty.
“This allows those EU states who are prepared to join forces . . . and act as an avant garde, though remaining member states are open to rule themselves out.”
Mr Westerwelle’s ambitions were tempered by British prime minister David Cameron who, ahead of his Munich appearance today, dismissed the idea. “My opinion is clear: there will be no European army,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
He said the British-French military co-operation might serve as a useful model for other nations, but it was “not a prototype for European co-operation”.