NATO was created in 1949, with the dual aim of keeping the peace among the Allies and providing a security alliance against the Soviet Union, there has been a tension between whether or not NATO should drive the security agenda in Europe.

Since 1949, a number of European-wide organisations have tried to coordinate European defence policy – from the failed attempt at a French proposal for an integrated European Defence Community in 1954, to its alternative, Western European Union (WEU), former association (1955–2011) of 10 countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom) that operated as a forum for the coordination of matters of European security and defense.

The precursor to the EU, the European Community, didn’t really put security matters on its agenda. So it was in the mid-1990s following the Maastrict Treaty that the newly-formed EU began to develop its own common foreign and security policy and the relationship with NATO began to shift.

NATO had already developed a good working relationship with the WEU, but this really became relevant in 1996 with attempts to use the WEU as an institutional bridge between the EU and NATO. As long as the EU remained an organisation without a defence component to support its common security policy, and NATO an organisation focused strictly on collective defence of its members, the EU had little need to develop military ties with NATO. However, as some EU member states started to consider an autonomous EU defence and security instrument towards the end of the 1990s, this relationship became unavoidable.

After a 1998 joint summit between the UK and France at Saint Malo, the formal process began towards creating the EU’s Security and Defence Policy (ESDP – now termed CSDP). Attention started to focus on an alternative arrangement to the WEU as the bridge between the two institutions.

Once the EU formally adopted the WEU’s “Petersberg Tasks”, which set out the conditions under which militaries could be deployed, the relationship between the EU and NATO changed from one of informal meetings to something more institutionalised. Formal committees and structures began to be mapped out by 1999.

However, cultural and institutional differences between the EU and NATO still had to be reduced before any official arrangements could be finalised. NATO retained a very strict security regime dating back to its Cold War years, while in contrast, the EU was designed as an open and transparent organisation. In order to adapt to a stricter security policy, the EU modelled its security framework on NATO. This was also helped by the fact that most EU states have also been NATO member states – currently 22 are members of both.

A new Era of EU-NATO Cooperation

EU-NATO relations facing new challenges and these are confronting both the European Union NATO today are severe and complex, including terrorism, refugee and migration crises, hybrid threats, disinformation. The importance of EU-NATO cooperation, based on shared values and interests, has become more critical than ever.

Both organizations need to pay growing attention to hybrid threats. A shared understanding is gradually emerging about the need for active countermeasures and improved resillence to malicious influence by external actors seeking to undermine Western democracies and current international order. The EU in particular has an important role to play in strengthening Europe’s resillence, but has yet to buil a coherent response including shared analysis drawing on relevant EU policies and improved crisis-response mechanisms. The second major challenge, capability development, has been at the focus of EU-NATO cooperation ever since the creation of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, but with few results. New EU initatives are being developed which can potentially make an important positive contribution also to NATO.

EU and NATO Member States are slowly waking up tp the new reality that there will be no bussiness as usual. It is hard to dispute the extensive progress the EU and NATO have made in deeping their cooperaiton. However, the direction in which the relationship should head is far from being decided. Some argues that there is a need for NATO to Europeanise as a result of the EU’s increasing strategic autonomy. The argument goes that if the EU were progressibely phase put its defence related dependence on the US, NATO could become primarily European. In contrasts, others see the feasibility of division of labour between the two, one that could eventually be conducive to an EU-US alliance in lieu of NATO as such. Others meanwhile argue for a US withdrawal form NATO and for leaving European security to the Europeans.

As Members of the European Parliament we will have to take important decisions that will make one or the other of these options a reality.

Twitter : @r_czarnecki

Ryszard Czarnecki:
Politician from Poland, Former Vice-President of European Parliament, Minister of European Affairs and Minister in Prime Minister Office