With a not yet four-year-old European Defence Agency (EDA), the initial round of the capability-driven process launched within the European Union is about to be concluded with the now eagerly awaited first result of the Capability Development Plan (CDP). It just so happens that this founding document is to be issued in July 2008 as France’s presidency of the EU begins, and while initial, and necessarily cautious, thoughts on what the future permanent structured cooperation introduced by the Lisbon Treaty might look like are about to emerge. Although this is a coincidence, it accords neatly with France’s declared aim of helping to develop European defence. Moreover, the very first ideas seem to indicate that the CDP will probably be important in developing the permanent structured cooperation that would, in the future, bring together member states wishing to achieve more ambitious capability objectives. Much more than a plan, the CDP is in fact a very powerful process which is due progressively to steer and concentrate in a more useful manner willing member states’ defence investments. This to the profit of the Union, whose capabilities will be reinforced, and to participating member states themselves, who will optimize their return on investment and have confidence that they spend better thanks to the consolidated analyses provided by EDA.

At the Right Time

Hasn’t the CDP come too late? Clearly not.

Indeed, we have been contemplating for quite a long time now capability shortfalls in Europe, the most obvious example being strategic transport, and there was no need for us to employ a sophisticated process either to know where our weaknesses and our needs in this area lay, or to decide to launch together the much awaited A400M transport aircraft project. More recently, the difficulties met by the EU, as well as by NATO incidentally, in attempting desperately to gather a sufficient number of helicopters ready for operations, for the Balkans, Afghanistan or Chad, illustrate another area where the shortfalls are painful and the requirement particularly urgent. To the point that the British and the French have taken a joint initiative to task the European Defence Agency to coordinate the visions and endeavours of all member states in that area. This initiative has recently been approved by all other member states, who are now giving it massive support. So are we still in need of a somewhat heavy and technically complicated if not arguably bureaucratic-looking process? Will it do anything apart from underline what is already obvious? And lastly, is it adapted to the tempo of operations or is it already overtaken by events such as the helicopter shortage? On the contrary, given such questions the capability development plan process must be reinforced and implemented without any further delay. If we had launched it earlier, we would not now be struggling against such acute shortages, and the sooner we use this new, forward-looking tool the better we will be equipped to identify systematically the shortfalls to come—many of which are far less obvious than the case of strategic transport—and to anticipate them instead of having to react in an emergency and make do with what is at hand. There is no contradiction in initiating the permanent, more systematic, process while dealing immediately with the most urgent and disabling shortfalls as they arise, today typically helicopters. But the latter particular initiative is mobilizing for the time being an amount of energy and resources which we would not be able to sustain permanently, with results likely to be restricted to what is achievable in the short term and at immediately affordable cost.