Paris, 5 December – On Wednesday, the WEU Assembly called for more and better coordination of European defence assets – troops and equipment –made more urgent still by the threat of “extremist” terrorism following the events of 11 September.
 
Two reports on “Defence equipment for European crisis management” and “European strategic lift capabilities”, whose recommendations the Assembly has adopted, have revealed the need make good numerous “gaps” in areas such as intelligence, deployability, combat, communications or protection.
 
According to Mr Alan Meale (UK/Labour) and Rapporteur on the subject of defence equipment, there has been “an awareness of these gaps for some time, but they have now been identified in the framework of the EU headline goal”, which plans for Europe to have the capability to project 60 000 troops and their equipment over an estimated distance of 4 000 kilometres within 60 days, and sustain them for approximately a year. He regretted that the EU had not yet given thought to armaments cooperation “a special sector in which the Union has no interest”.
 
“The key words are cooperation and coordination. There is a need to encourage interoperability, which should become the rule rather than the exception” Mr Meale said, adding that in order to make progress in those areas there was “absolutely no need to create new structures”. He recommended using to the full institutional structures that had been “tried and tested”, including WEAG/WEAO, offshoots of WEU. Speaking in the debate, General Phillipe Morillon, a member of the European Parliament, welcomed the fact that WEU was a tree that continued to bear fruit”.
 
In his report on strategic air transport, Mr Jim Wilkinson (UK/Cons.) took the view that “Europe’s strategic airlift capacity”, with German and French C160/Transall fleets, “is currently inadequate and ageing”, adding that “the introduction into service of the Airbus A400M will not solve all the problems of sending forces by air” and “chartering of foreign aircraft will always be necessary”.  The Rapporteur also stressed the need to coordinate “to best effect, at a European level, the use of air transport assets in the event of a crisis”.