Rasmussen at the European Council at the end of 2013?
(BRUSSELS2) The Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has just expressed his desire to Herman Van Rompuy (President of the European Council) to be invited to the Summit of Heads of State and Government in December 2013 , devoted in part to Defence.
A request that may seem obvious when talking about the NATO-EU partnership at a meeting of Defense Ministers. But that may also appear out of place here. Much of the discussion is elsewhere. Defense Europe is currently suffering from a lack of investment on the part of European political and budgetary authorities. It is therefore not a problem of NATO but of the member states. Next, the question of European shortcomings is eminently a European question that is as much economic, legal and political as it is military.
Finally, there are specifically European questions to be settled within the European Union. To what extent can military projects for civilian use (and vice versa) benefit from European funds? And which ones? Are we going further in the movement to organize the defense market initiated by the Defense directives? What conclusions do we draw from the implementation of the instruments resulting from the Treaty of Lisbon? Are these well suited? European crisis management does not deserve to be better coordinated, even reorganized, between initiatives that continue to be taken, separately, by the European Commission and the structures of the European diplomatic service. Of course there is a point relating to NATO-EU synergies in terms of pooling and sharing on the one hand, Smart Defense on the other. Can we then limit the presence of Rasmussen to this point? It seems difficult...
Unless Rasmussen's presence is not only the discussion of substantive issues. But the ongoing renewal of European structures on the one hand, of the NATO General Secretariat on the other, is perhaps not entirely for nothing in this desire for presence... A summit is also an unexpected opportunity to test, or validate, certain candidacies.
