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Debate on the Address

My Lords, in this vastly wide-ranging debate, I wish to draw attention to a relatively narrow matter, which causes me great concern, regarding the lamentable lack of co-operation and, indeed, indifference between the European Union and NATO. I approach this as one who is in no way a Eurosceptic and has for many years attended the NATO Parliamentary Assembly with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. I am afraid that I cannot see much in the proposed European treaty Bill that will improve the relationship between NATO and the EU. Surely there should be growing co-operation between the two, especially given their largely, but not entirely, overlapping membership, which ought to bring their work closer together. On the one hand, NATO, with its continuing credential as a relevant organisation, in view of the new belligerence of President Putin, has been moving more into EU territory with regard to civil protection against terrorism and natural disaster. On the other hand, the EU has been moving more into the military role of NATO. The Berlin Plus agreement set out how co-operation could be established. It was to allow the European Union assured access to the assets of NATO, including SHAPE. However, that agreement has not broken the logjam that bedevils NATO-EU relations. Of course I acknowledge that the Turkey-Cyprus dispute is one of the reasons behind this apparent impasse, but that is not the whole story. I was struck by remarks made by Tomas Valasek, former director of the Slovak defence ministry, who said that the Turkey-Cyprus dispute has merely been a ““smokescreen”” for the European and Atlanticist camps in NATO and the EU to hide behind. There is a lot of truth in that. The Secretary-General of NATO, de Hoop Scheffer, said not long ago: "““It is astounding how narrow the bandwidth of co-operation between NATO and the [European] Union has remained … there is still a remarkable distance between them””." One serious problem is the astonishing absence of any formal channel of co-operation between NATO and the European Commission. The Commission decides on an increasing number of subjects that affect NATO and the EU. There should be a comprehensive institutional framework of co-operation between the Commission and NATO. In January of this year, when I was in Brussels with the committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, we met a Commission official who told us that he had never met his NATO counterparts. That seems astonishing when you realise that there is already too much overlap and duplication between the two—for instance, the EU battle groups on the one hand and the NATO Response Force on the other, and, in the field of command and control, the EU Operations Centre on the one hand and SHAPE on the other. What can be done to correct all this? I hope that the Government will make an effort in the months and years ahead to try to correct this abysmal relationship. Perhaps the climate has changed, which might give us the opportunity to make those changes, especially with the election in Paris of President Sarkozy. His new attitude should give us hope, because he appears to be much more interested in co-operation with the United States than his predecessors were, which was one of the causes of the logjam in relations. Let me make some suggestions for Ministers and Governments to do something about. I have spoken about the need for better institutional contacts between the two organisations, especially at Commission level. My second suggestion concerns the fact that the EU and NATO both have growing capacity to come to the aid of a stricken nation that cannot cope on its own after suffering from, say, a major terrorist attack or natural disaster. These facilities, which both organisations have put together and are growing, are largely civil resources such as fire, police or technical assistance. Within those organisations there is a military element and both bodies have their regular training exercises but, unbelievably, they carry them out separately. The EU has its Monitoring and Information Centre for civil catastrophes, whether by terrorism or natural disaster, while NATO has an almost exactly parallel organisation, the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre. Both carry out separate exercises. In May, I attended a NATO exercise in Croatia where a hijack, biological attack, earthquake, chemical spill and transport disruption were simulated. Many countries took part, from as far away as Finland, which sent emergency units. The EU has similar exercises to do exactly the same job—14 in the past five years—using the same scenarios that I saw in Croatia earlier this year. Why do the Government not make a start in trying to improve relationships between NATO and the European Union? As a start, they could try to get them to do these exercises together. There is no reason on earth why they should each approach this from separate points of view. It must be sensible to do it in co-ordination. There is a huge amount to do to achieve a closer relationship between the European Union and NATO. I hope that the Government will be able to give a little time to considering that, as it is of great and growing importance.