Germany has stepped up its pressure for new EU defence structures at a two-day meeting of Western European Union (WEU) ministers which concluded in Bremen yesterday.
But ministers of the alliance, which acts as a bridge between NATO and the EU, stopped well short of backing proposals from Bonn which would see the EU establishing a military committee or involving defence ministers in internal EU meetings.
Such ideas, as well as the long-running issue of merging the WEU with the EU, will certainly form part of the EU Cologne summit deliberations in early June, when EU leaders are determined to show willing to begin taking responsibility back from the US for the region's security.
But diplomatic sources say the summit is unlikely to specifically back any such proposals or German calls for a deadline by the end of next year for agreement on new structures. Sources say, however, that progress has been made in talks with the US about the use by the EU, through the WEU, of NATO military assets for peacekeeping and humanitarian operations that the US does not want to be involved in.
Ireland has joined Britain, France and others in arguing that further institutional changes in defence structures are premature, particularly in the light of the need to assess the lessons of Kosovo.
Ireland was represented at the meeting as an observer by the Minister for Defence, Mr Smith.
In the WEU, 28 states have differing degrees of membership or observer status, including 10 full members which must be both NATO and EU members.
In their final communique, the ministers yesterday welcomed the determination to contribute to the development of an effective European defence and security policy and the capability for European crisis management.
They also supported both NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia and the proposed naval blockade, and welcomed an EU initiative for a stability pact for south-east Europe.
But if there was a lack of enthusiasm for deadlines on agreement about new structures, few were in doubt that the European defence debate has entered a new phase.
The German Minister and current President of the WEU, Mr Rudolf Scharping, said Europe needed to plug gaps in its forces, build up strategic air transport, intelligence-gathering and command of joint operations, and co-ordinate arms manufacture.
"We are now seeing the European nations taking a much greater grip on their own future," the British Defence Secretary, Mr George Robertson, said. "In Kosovo we have all come face to face with the European future and it is frightening."
Mr Robertson said budgets must take account of this: "There can be no peace dividend without peace. That is going to dawn on some countries . . . The days of cutting defence budgets are over."
Mr Scharping said the WEU would not necessarily disappear before 2000 but said it could act as a "bridge" for NATO states wanting to join the EU and for "states of the EU which do not belong to NATO but would like to collaborate with it".
