By Kenza Sahli
Today was the last session of the simulation. This session was very intense because the Foreign Affairs Council had to finish and vote on its agenda. Furthermore, there were some debates on several amendment and proposals because not all countries were willing to give in on their views.
First of all, they picked the discussion again about the hybrid defense and then, they move forward to the Estonian-Swedish Amendment: “In order to secure the cultural, social and political autonomy of participating member states in the European Hybrid Defense Taskforce, the capacity for a member states with ingrained traditions of political neutrality to opt of aggressive measures employed by the Taskforce such as the hosting of foreign military deployments or the
deployment of their own military is, as per the language of Article 31 of the The Treaty on European Union, codified and ensured into the legal structure of the European Hybrid Defense Taskforce. In order to opt-out a country must write up a request to do so to be approved by the European Commission, justified by either a tradition of neutrality or special domestic circumstances (such an inability to contribute).”
Czechia, Belgium and Italy called this amendment into question because of the opt out clause and especially the “tradition of neutrality.” Czechia put forward the fact that this sentence was restrictive because not all the Member States have a “tradition neutrality.” Moreover, the Czechia Foreign Affairs Minister supported the opt-out system but felt that it had to be more expansive and inclusive.
The Foreign Affairs Council decided to put the amendment aside for a moment to
move on the Bulgaria-Portugal proposal.
After, they decided to go back to the opting-out clause, and the Foreign Affairs Council found an agreement.
The other proposal discussed today, was the “Bulgaria, Portugal – Partnership, Capabilities”. Bulgaria and Portugal introduced their proposal in mentioning that this proposal is a way to Reaffirm the relationship between the European Union and the NATO. At the beginning the
proposal was:
1) The Foreign Affairs Committee reaffirms the links between the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with regards to complementarity of actions in line with EU interests and both Union and national strategic autonomy, building upon EU Member States’ membership to NATO or its Partnership for Peace program.
2) Aforementioned links ought to be deepened in areas of strategic communications, coordinated exercises and capabilities building to increase synergies between the EU and NATO and therefore improve resilience capacity as a whole.
3) A joint set of priorities relative to crisis management and peace operations has to be agreed upon by the European Union and the United Nations as part of the EU-UN Framework Agreement on Mutual Support in the context of their respective missions and operations in the field.
4) A stressing point should be put on the need for EU defense initiatives and capability development tools to be better embedded in national defense planning.
5) Furthermore, the Foreign Affairs Committee calls for the establishment of partnerships with third-parties in specific policy sectors such as cyber security, maritime, hybrid threats and energy security.
This proposal at the beginning divided the Foreign Affairs Council in two separate groups; the group in favor the reaffirmation of the relationship with NATO and the group that don’t feel interesting to integrate NATO in a proposal regarding the strategic compass goals.
Indeed, Ireland, Cyprus, Finland, Sweden and Austria emphasized why they didn’t want at the first time to pass the proposal.
Firstly, Sweden highlighted that over the last two years the European Union is moving away from NATO, and that the purpose is to build our own military program.
Finland agreed with Sweden by adding that the European Union doesn’t need to increase its relationship with NATO because the strategic compass is the opposite.
Besides, Ireland worried that this proposal was redundant and thought that the relation with NATO only affects the individual member states decisions.
They were all agree that the EU spending to much money to develop the military independence to pass a proposal that increases the relationship with NATO. As for Austria, it underlined the possibility to agree with this proposal only if Bulgaria and Portugal decided to put an opt-out mention.
Bulgaria and Portugal answered the concerns of Sweden, Finland, Cyprus and Ireland by saying that the EU an NATO relationship is increasing contrary to what Sweden said before. But also, they highlighted that non NATO members are participating in partnership programs with NATO so the link already exist even if the States are not full members.
Bulgaria, concluded its reasoning by saying that a stronger cooperation will be beneficial for all member states.
Along the same line, Czechia highlighted that the strategic compass is to create more connection between the Member States of the EU but also at an international scale. Indeed, Czechia underlined that the strategic compass is also a tool for the EU to move away from China and Russia threat. However, it said that even if the United Sates can be consider as a threat for the EU the Foreign Affairs Council had to find a balance.
Furthermore, France summarizes all these ideas by qualifying its statement. France emphasized that the EU is in between because it want to build autonomy from NATO but now the doesn’t have enough way to doesn’t have a relationship with NATO.
Consequently, for France it would not be productive to move away from NATO at this point especially with the increase of Chinese and Russian threats.
In consequence, the countries that were unwilling to pass this proposal at the beginning gave a solution, they agreed to change the language of the proposal to passed it. Actually, Sweden made a modification to fit perfectly with all point of views. Sweden change “EU Member States” to “those EU Member States that favor relationships with NATO membership”
This proposal was very interesting because it put in the spotlight the ambiguous relationship with the United States.
In conclusion, I would like to thank the Foreign Affairs Council for allowing me to follow their agenda for three days. But I would also like to congratulate the Foreign Affairs Council for their remarkable work, especially because they start with nothing.