Global Press: FAC Meeting 1/14/22

By Kenza Sahli

During the simulation today, the Foreign Affairs Council decided to review the amendment that they proposed yesterday.

In order to do that, they did a go round the table and each country speak about their concerns and also what specific point they want to improve. During this first debriefing about the amendment, all the countries emphasize three different aspects that they wanted to discuss today.

The first aspect is the language, the Foreign Affairs Council wanted to be more clear and specific.

The second aspect is the budget with the European Defense Fund (EDF) and the Common Security and Defense Policy. The European Defense funds (EDF) is the Commission’s initiative to support collaborative defense research and development, and to foster an innovative and competitive defense industrial base.
As for the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), it enables the Union to take a leading role in peace-keeping operations, conflict prevention and in the strengthening of the international security. It is an integral part of the Eu’s comprehensive approach towards crisis management, drawing on civilian and military assets.

This aspect, puts forwards the main goal of the Foreign Affairs Council : the integration. What is very interesting here is that all the countries present in the Foreign Affairs Council agreed with this movement towards integration even if for instance there are some countries that are eurosceptics such as Czechia.

The clause that was concerned by the problem of language was the third clause.
At the beginning this clause was «The Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) will help determine the necessary measures to be taken in response to each threat level, and an assessment will be made for the funding to be dispatched to the targeted country.

All the countries agreed that the problem of this clause is around the term  “funding.” The economic aspect of the proposal is as much as important as the proposal itself, and the Foreign Affairs Council understand it.

In consequence, some countries suggested a news amendments to answer the question : How the budget will be handled? And by who?

Firstly, we have the Irish-Swedish-Czechian amendment : “The Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) will help determine the necessary measures to be taken in response to each threat level. An assessment will be made for appropriate aid to be allotted for actions to be taken in the assistance of or for the procurement of resources to assist a targeted nation with adherence to the regulations of the CSDP and with approval and oversight from the European Defense Agency (EDA).”

In the same direction we have the Greece amendment, it added : “EU certified observers are present along the dispatch of funds/ measures aid to ensure that the approved action will be honestly and properly executed.”

The notion of honesty is very interesting here. Greece put forward that the supervision is not a simple action that robots can make. Actually, supervision is about being human, transparent and also act with rectitude and loyalty with the European Citizens.

Also, during the session Czechia suggests to strike the subsection 4 in its entirety. The delegation unanimously agreed.

As a reminder, the subsection 4 was : “in the interest of integration and protection, no member nations shall approve the trading of funds, lands or goods with nations deemed to be immediate foreign threats to the security of other European member nations.”

This subsection posed a problem because some European Countries like Eastern Europe Countries or Germany depend on Russian energy.

So, the Foreign Affairs Council decided to change its perspective and give a new clause:

“To secure these points and to manage each of these steps, a joint EU task force on hybrid defense will be created, acknowledged as the European Hybrid Defense Taskforce, or the EHDT. The European Hybrid Defense Taskforce would report to the European Defense Agency (EDA).”

“This body would be responsible for the labeling of immediate foreign threats based on the criteria in clause 1, the determination of risk assessment outlined in clause 2, as well as coordinating multilateral cooperation of all member states to counter threats determined by the risk assessment.”

“This body would be headed by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs, who would lead all intelligence and counterintelligence initiatives undertaken by the task force.”

This new clause is very interesting because it is clear about how the Foreign Affairs Council want to implement and establish its crisis management plan for the future of cooperation within the European Union.

With this new clause we cans ask ourselves two specific questions. First, what they mean about “hybrid defense”. It will be interesting if the Foreign Affairs Council emphasize this hybrid defense to have a clear view about it.

Can this amendment really work knowing that the European Union already tried to implement a similar idea in 1998 the Petersber Tasks?