EU member states cling to crisis-management powers

Member states are refusing to give up control over crisis-management plans.

The European Union’s member states are refusing to give the president of the European Council, the president of the European Commission and the foreign policy chief increased powers under the EU’s crisis-management plan.

Nearly eight months after the Lisbon treaty took effect, several national governments are objecting to a proposal that, under the EU’s Crisis Co-ordination Arrangements (CCA), the EU’s most senior figures should be able to trigger crisis procedures in the event of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

Under the existing rules, only the country holding the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers can trigger the crisis mechanism. Member states feared that a proposed revision of the plan would put too much power in the hands of Herman Van Rompuy, the Council president, José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, and Catherine Ashton, the high representative for foreign and security policy.

The CCA sets out how the EU institutions and member states should co-operate in the event of a calamity such as a terrorist attack, a pandemic or a massive earthquake. It can only be activated if the emergencies “are of such wide-ranging impact or political significance that they require a co-ordinated EU response on a political level”, the introduction to the 2008 crisis manual says.

The CCA was drawn up at the instigation of justice and home affairs ministers in 2004. The manual includes a phonebook of contacts of national and EU-level emergency co-ordinators, public health, policing and military authorities as well as EU agencies.

The first CCA was approved in 2006 and to date has been activated just once, after the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, of November 2008. France at the time held the EU’s rotating presidency.

The CCA is reviewed regularly and emergency procedures involving both military and civilian tasks are updated. A review of the CCA was started by the Swedish presidency of the Council of Ministers last year and changes were proposed.

Member states are expected to approve an update on Monday (26 July), but diplomats said that they would not include provisions to take account of institutional changes introduced by the Lisbon treaty. Those have been shelved until a later date and a meeting planned for Tuesday (20 July) was “put on hold” to allow member states more time to consider them, said one diplomat following the issue.

“The changes are supposed to be on a technical level. However, it is obvious that this [plan] has clear political implications on who has the right to push the button,” said the diplomat. The envoy added that the changes posed a “conflict of competences” between the rotating presidency and the other EU posts.

The Commission has sided with member states in voicing doubts about including Van Rompuy, Barroso and Ashton, saying the changes are “not feasible” at this time. An official from Van Rompuy’s office said that neither the president nor any of his staff was involved in the revision of the CCA.

Current crisis-management procedures limit the role of the Commission and foreign policy chief to “assisting” the presidency in co-ordinating a crisis response along with the Council’s Joint Situation Centre (SitCen), which monitors global events around the clock and pools EU intelligence. The SitCen is to become part of Ashton’s European External Action Service (EEAS) when it is set up at the end of the year.

The CCA, as it will be updated on Monday, will not take account of the EEAS, nor of the Lisbon treaty’s solidarity clause, which calls on member states to “act jointly” if one falls victim to a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

An EU official said decisions to include the senior EU officials would be put off for now, adding that the revised CCA manual would be tested during an exercise in September.

Elmar Brok, a German centre-right MEP and a former chairman of the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, who was a member of the EU’s constitutional convention, said that not allowing Ashton or Barroso a bigger role in crisis management was “simply ridiculous”, particularly since the Lisbon treaty had been in force since December. But he said that Van Rompuy should not be given powers to trigger the CCA “because he does not head an operative agency”.

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