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National parliaments in Europe must work together more effectively. They should also conduct exercises to enable them to decide more quickly on the effective deployment of military assets.

Soldiers of the Dutch Airmobile Brigade and a US Black Hawk helicopter on an exercise in June last year. 

Parliamentary involvement

This is one of the recommendations to emerge from the EU seminar on ‘The parliamentary dimension of defence cooperation’, organised by the Dutch Ministry of Defence and the Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’. Improving parliamentary involvement is one of the priorities of the Netherlands’ EU Presidency.

Decision-making

MPs from all EU countries attending the seminar shared experiences and exchanged ideas on better decision-making. Though armed forces can be deployed rapidly, it often takes a long time to obtain political approval. Governments and national parliaments must work together more reliably and take difficult decisions more quickly.

Coordination

Defence cooperation at operational level is really taking off – between the Netherlands and Germany, for example – and national parliaments have to keep pace. However, in some member states parliament makes the decisions on military deployment, while in others the government need only inform parliament. Such differences hamper cooperation, so better coordination is needed. Furthermore, the European Parliament must call the High Representative to account every year over progress on agreements concerning European defence cooperation.

Support

One of the main conclusions of the seminar is that parliaments must not only monitor the actions of their governments, they must also inform voters about European defence cooperation to increase public support.