Paris, 15 June 2010 – On Tuesday the European Security and Defence Assembly (ESDA) voiced its desire for a streamlined permanent interparliamentary structure capable of ensuring continued interparliamentary scrutiny of the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in accordance with the provisions set out in the Lisbon Treaty.

The ten EU member states which are full members of Western European Union (WEU) announced their intention on 31 March last to wind down the activities of the organisation and denounce its founding treaty: the 1954 modified Brussels Treaty (MBT). The WEU and its Assembly, the ESDA, will thus be dissolved by the end of June 2011 at the latest. One of the possible avenues for continuing the work carried out by the ESDA is to create an interparliamentary conference which would be convened by the Conference of Community and European Affairs Committees of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC).

The scheduled closure of the ESDA has caused a stir among its members and was the subject of two reports submitted to the Assembly at its plenary session on Tuesday: the first, tabled by Mr Paul WILLE (Belgium, Liberal Group) on behalf of the Political Committee, on European defence and the Lisbon Treaty, and the second, tabled by Mrs Marietta KARAMANLI (France, Socialist Group) and Mr Hendrik DAEMS (Belgium, Liberal Group) on behalf of the Committee for Parliamentary and Public Relations, on CSDP monitoring by national parliaments and in the European Parliament.

In his report, Mr WILLE considers that the decision of 31 March “is a double step backwards: in the first place, a strong and cohesive alliance of 10 countries (plus 18 associate states) is being replaced by a weaker one of 27 countries, and, secondly, the European Security and Defence Assembly… is being abandoned without there being an alternative structure up and running”. Presenting the report to fellow parliamentarians in the hemicycle, he declared “the EU member states will continue taking piecemeal diplomatic measures, a far cry from the declared ambitions for the CSDP. The way this matter has been handled is offensive; it is a snub to us”.

Mrs KARAMANLI, also on the offensive, said she found it “regrettable” that things had been done in such haste and that the Assembly had been presented with a fait accompli. In response to a survey carried out in the framework of the report, “all the national parliaments concerned express the desire to maintain a common forum for oversight of the CSDP. Therefore another body will, of necessity, replace our Assembly”, she declared.

During the debate, in which many speakers took part, Mr John GREENWAY (United Kingdom, Federated Group), speaking on behalf of the Federated Group, voiced his “dismay about how all of this has been announced, without any discussion… about the implications”. He went on to say “the Assembly is at, or close to, an end, but its role must be reincarnated in some form”. A new structure “must be based on national parliaments and the initiative must come from national parliamentarians” and “must include associate members such Turkey and EU accession countries”. Those speaking on behalf of the other political groups, MM. João Bosco MOTA AMARAL(Portugal, EPP-CD), Pietro MARCENARO (Italy, Socialist Group) and Mike HANCOCK (United Kingdom, Liberal Group) expressed similar views.

At the end of the debate, the Assembly decided “to continue its work as long as the modified Brussels Treaty legally remains in force so as to be in a position to hand over in an orderly manner to the interparliamentary body which will be established to carry on the task of scrutiny of Europe’s foreign, security and defence policy”. It invited the national parliaments to “promote a credible model of interparliamentary scrutiny which does not reduce the role of parliaments to that of mere spectator at general conferences”. Finally, the ESDA called for the establishment of a parliamentary body “with permanent structures (secretariat and committees) the numerical composition of whose national delegations could be similar in proportion to that of the national delegations to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe”. For the Assembly, the aim must be to set up a “cost-effective but permanent structure which is unaffected by the changes of national governments”.