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                                                                     PRESS RELEASE

                                                                       June 30th 2008
                                          New CER essay

               Willing and able? EU defence in 2020
                           By Daniel Keohane and Tomas Valasek

Demand for military forces is growing. And the Europeans increasingly turn to the EU when in need
of troops for peacekeeping or for delivering humanitarian aid. But will the EU be able to keep up
with the demand?

In this new CER EU2020 essay, Daniel Keohane and Tomas Valasek argue that it is possible, but
only if EU governments take the following steps:

 # The EU-27 should reform their militaries and co-operate closer. Europe gets less military
 power for its money than the US because member-states make little effort to co-ordinate their
 weapons purchases, or to build joint units. .

 # The EU governments need to invest more in prevention. They should spend more EU
 development aid on areas that pose security challenges to Europe. And the EU should develop a
 crisis management doctrine to guide policy-makers on how to use civilian and military resources
 during crises.

 # The EU and NATO also need to co-ordinate their military plans to avoid competition for the
 member-states' money. They should co-operate on missile defences for Europe, and build their
 respective rapid-reaction units to the same standard.

Keohane and Valasek also warn the Europeans to stop assuming that the EU will never fight a war.
The world of 2020 will remain a dangerous place, and the US will not always be there to help
Europe sort out trouble on the continent. In the future, the EU will be called on to carry out more
operations, and these missions will sometimes involve fighting. So the European governments
should be explaining to their voters that the Union will occasionally have to use military force. And
the governments should start a debate among themselves on the circumstances, under which they
will resort to military force in the future.


Notes for editors:

1. Daniel Keohane is research fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies. He was previously a senior
research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence
at the Centre for European Reform.

2. For media enquiries, please contact the authors on either +44 20 7233 1199 or tomas@cer.org.uk.

3. This paper can be downloaded in PDF or ordered in hard copy from the CER website (www.cer.org.uk)
or by contacting Kate Meakins at kate@cer.org.uk or on +44 20 7233 1199.

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