RPT: REVIEW - Brussels, Washington Disagree On EU Defense, Procurement Plans

BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th May, 2019) Brussels and Washington are not in full agreement on the EU plans on defense as the United States fears that the new EU procurement policy may exclude third countries, including allies.

For decades, NATO has been a key defense actor in Europe. However, a few years ago, the European Union began taking steps toward consolidating its defense policy. A special fund to coordinate national investment in defense, the European Defence Fund, was established in 2017. The Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) was launched in 2018.

The new EU defense plans came together at the time when the US administration was persistently calling on the European allies to boost their defense expenditure up to NATO standards. US President Donald Trump has remarked that European countries were not paying their fair share.

The suggested defense budget target for NATO members is 2 percent of a country's GDP. However, according to NATO statistics, less than one third of the 29 members achieved that in 2018.

Earlier in May, the US government reportedly sent EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini a letter detailing the US concerns over the future rules of the European Defence Fund and PESCO. The undersecretary of defense in charge of procurement, Ellen Lord, and the State Department undersecretary for arms control and international security, Andrea Thompson, warned of potential reciprocal limits the United States would be forced to place on its European allies if it was shut off from the defense projects.

Mogherini addressed the issue at a press conference on Tuesday.

"The European Union is and remains open to US companies and equipment. The PESCO projects are additional elements that come on top of all we have already in place," Mogherini said.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has previously referred to PESCO in the same vein as an initiative that can complement, rather than undermine the alliance.

According to Gilles Lebreton, a French member of the European Parliament, who spent some time on its security and defense committee, most of his parliament colleagues "want to remain in NATO and conceive the embryo of European defense that some advocate only as a complement to NATO."

As a member of French National Rally (RN) party, Lebreton is of the view that defense should be a national priority.

"As far as the French RN is concerned, I believe that defense should remain a national, sovereign responsibility which does not, of course, preclude France's freely negotiated cooperation with historical allies such as the United Kingdom, Germany, smaller countries in the European Union or the United States," Lebreton told Sputnik.

Another French member of the European Parliament, Aymeric Chauprade, believes that, on a global scale, Washington is competing for domination with Beijing.

"What I think is that in the framework of the rivalry for global domination between the United States and China, Washington wants to definitively digest Europe and absorb its defense industries, including eventually Airbus in its military part but also civil ... I remain in favor of Europe as an independent power developing a strategic partnership with Russia in order to avoid the United States-China bipolarization which could speed up the world in a world war!" Chauprade told Sputnik.

Filip Dewinter, a member of the Belgian Federal parliament, remarked that some European countries, such as France which has its own robust defense industry, had always refused to buy US equipment, while others were "happy to buy American weapons."

"European industry should stand on its own and develop its own systems, trying to harmonize within NATO at best, but of course NATO will never be perfectly streamlined as the Russian or the Chinese forces are. We have good hi-tech specialist firms, we must continue to feed them with defense contracts," Dewinter said.

All in all, Nina Bachkatov, a professor of political science at the University of Liege, Belgium, does not believe that the situation will result in a "serious crisis."

"The simple reason is that nobody can bear the consequences of such a crisis. So tensions, quarrels, reconciliations, compromises, new surges of tensions, yes, that is possible. But existential crises on defense, I do not believe it," Bachkatov told Sputnik.

For now, the European Union continues working on PESCO and its defense plans. So far, PESCO has 25 members. Almost all of the EU-28 joined except Denmark Malta and the soon-to-leave United Kingdom. A total of 34 PESCO projects have been adopted, including some on medical command, cybersecurity. maritime surveillance.