Moving the goalposts

Europe must invest in new equipment if it intends to achieve more ambitious aims for its security and defence policy, the author argues.

At the Helsinki summit in December 1999, EU leaders agreed that the Union should step up its security and defence policy. The governments decided the EU should be able to carry out autonomous military missions, ranging from humanitarian relief to separating warring factions in a civil war. However, Europe’s meagre contribution to the NATO campaign in Kosovo the same year highlighted the continent’s lack of military muscle. EU governments, therefore, also signed up to a number of military capability goals – referred to in official documents as the “headline goal”. The aim was to set up a so-called ‘rapid reaction force’ of 60,000 troops, plus additional air and naval forces, by the end of 2003. That deadline is now upon us. How has the EU fared?

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Daniel Keohane is the research fellow for security & defence policy at the Centre for European Reform, an independent think-tank in London.

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