Putting a financial price on the development of the EU's military capabilities is likely to be one of the challenges facing an informal meeting of EU defence ministers today in Sintra near Lisbon.
Ministers are expected to discuss the practical problems involved in the establishment by 2003 of the EU's independent rapid-reaction capability agreed at the Helsinki summit in December.
That means looking at the Union's new political-military structures, how individual countries will train troops for specific roles in the 60,000-strong force, how many each will be ready to contribute, and how they will be paid for.
The latter question will certainly be on the mind of the Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, ahead of this week's Cabinet discussion of the defence review, but, as the Portuguese presidency letter inviting ministers to the meeting a makes clear, he will not be alone.
"The build-up of the EU's future military capabilities will have an impact in our defence budgets as well as in our national public opinions," the Portuguese Minister for Defence, Mr Castro Caldes, says. "This being a sensitive matter, it would be convenient [for it] to be well explained through the media, in order to avoid future criticisms."
But "ministers will be asking more questions than they give answers", ahead of a March 20th-21st joint meeting in Brussels of foreign and defence ministers, a European source explained.
While defence ministers have met informally before, in Vienna last year, Ireland and other countries are still resisting suggestions that they should meet as an official council of defence ministers, preferring to keep their role subservient to foreign ministers.
But the development of the Union's military capability goes on apace. Last week NATO and the Western European Union, effectively the EU's defence wing, held virtual crisis management exercises in which the alliance lent soldiers and supplies for a EU-led peace operation on a make-believe island.
And the Union has set in train a debate about ongoing relations with NATO, with the new Secretary General of the Council of Ministers and ex-NATO General Secretary, Mr Javier Solana, coming under some criticism for a letter suggesting that NATO officers should be invited to attend EU planning meetings.
Mr Smith will be accompanied today by the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Defence, Mr Michael O'Donoghue, and the assistant political director of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Mr Declan Kelleher.
Sintra will also be the second time that a far-right minister in Austria's new government attends an EU meeting. This time it is Mr Herbert Scheibner of the Freedom Party, which has been scorned by EU partners for extremist remarks by its leader, Mr Jorg Haider.
To head off protocol clashes, no group photograph is planned today, an EU source said.
