ELF EXPERT FORUM ON EU SECURITY AND DEFENCE After Csaba Tóth (ELF Member of the Board of Directors) s brief introduction and Katarzyna Lubnauer (Nowoczesna Party Leader) s welcome speech, Andres Fogh Rasmussen gave his keynote speech. Andres Fogh Rasmussen stated that today Europe should build defence not only to immediate threats, but also to the EU core values and principles which are threatened by autocrats in all countries. In the current struggle between dictatorship and democracy, liberals have an obligation to protect and promote those core values principles. Instead of a destructive confrontation with autocrats, liberals should opt for a constructive dialogue with the society moving the slogan A Europe that protect to solid propositions for the citizens that strengthen the desire to protect freedom and democracy. In this regard, he highlighted 5 main points liberals should consider: 1. NATO should continue to be the cornerstone of the European transatlantic security. Considering that, after Brexit 80% of NATO defence spending will come from outside EU, Europe would be foolish to agree policies that make NATO obsolete despite differences with current US administration. 2. EU must increase investment in its own security. Europe cannot rely on the US muscle alone. All the allies must meet the 2% of GDP benchmark that they all agreed in 2006. 3. PESCO should be strengthened. PESCO is indeed a good initiative if it leads to higher EU defence investments and does not duplicate NATO: it offers the chance to build smart defence. However, it must be underpinned by competitive industry base. To this aim, the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework should show significant budget increase for defence spending. 4. Fight against hybrid warfare must be strengthened. Liberals must raise awareness of what it is going on to make the voters resilient and ensure that the EU legislation is sufficient to counter disinformation and warfare with right and efficient technological tools that are now available. Liberals should also increase the spending for fighting against non-conventional threats (STRATCOM has allocated 1.1m EURO while the US Congress 100m USD). 5. Efforts to counter Weapons of Mass Destruction must be stepped up. Technological change has dramatically transformed the nature and face of security and defence. Whether it becomes a positive or negative gamechanger depends on the actions the EU will take next. Liberals should embrace technological progress and advocate for a policy framework that makes this technological change a positive game-changer. Liberals should also be in the forefront to promote a global Non- Proliferation Treaty. Panel 1: European Defence and Security Policy: Capability Expectations gap. How to effectively face the new security challenges? The moderator, Michal Baranowski (Head of the Warsaw Office of the German Marshall Fund) focused the panel on how to square NATO with PESCO, making sure that the latter will provide additional capabilities during this time of transatlantic tensions.
Karolina Pomoroka (Leiden University) said that the EU institutions and the Member States with the creation of PESCO are showing interest in EU Security and Defence after a period of stagnation and that this is a good sign. However, she is cautiously optimistic about it: the chance that there will not be political will to make PESCO a success is indeed high. PESCO is indeed not legally binding it is more about peer pressure. When it comes to NATO-PESCO relations she stressed the need to avoid duplication. In this regard, it is important that the EU comes with a clear definition of strategic autonomy to avoid misunderstanding with its allies. She also said that the scenario 2 proposed by the European Commission is not feasible and that the EU should focus more on geopolitical dialogue rather than on convergence of national securities. Thierry Tardy (EU Institute for Security Studies) pointed out how PESCO has developed different (and has lower) ambitions compared to the ones set at the beginning because of different views about it amongst Member States (particularly France and Germany). PESCO is now more intended to be a platform facilitating cooperation between the 25 Member States that joined it rather than a platform where the EU Member States will develop EU strategic autonomy: PESCO is not about collective security and defence, it should be the vehicle, not the end, to understand the tools the EU needs to cooperate in security and defence. However, he stressed that peer pressure might also lead to unexpected developments. Karlijn Jans (Strategic Analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies) said that despite public opinion about military cooperation and/or integration are higher than before, PESCO is just a baby. Policymakers should consider PESCO as a new-born platform and that the level of understanding and enthusiasm among Member States is very different. It will ultimately depend on Member States whether it will be successful or not. Since PESCO developments have strong consequences on NATO they must be carried out carefully. Dr. Marcin Zaborowski (Visegrad Insight) stressed that Europeans have a different threat perception after the terrorist attacks and this has had material implication: defence spending has increased (EU defence fund) but not enough whether the EU likes it or not, it relies on US defence. In this period of transatlantic tensions with Trump less committed to NATO, the EU should invest even more in defence spending for building a strong defence industry and being able to deploy EU capabilities when needed. However, PESCO must cooperate with NATO rather than duplicate it. This will prevent PESCO developing into an autonomous structure. Urmas Paet MEP (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia 2005 2014) highlighted that the key issues today are the implementation of NATO s decisions and the idea of a EU Defence Union on which there are different opinions. In the EU, the most important thing, it is that all the EU countries take EU security and Defence as well as the US relations seriously. He is not so pessimistic about the US government: he said that governments come and go, and that as the EU knows the relevance of the US cooperation and the US knows the relevance of the EU cooperation in security and defence. As for the EU security autonomy, he said that we can define it as autonomy from the USA and ability to act. However, the way to reach it is still long since it involves not only security but also legitimacy from the citizens: in the EU there are
still very different strategic cultures. He concluded saying that the European Parliament must play a key and big role for increasing this security and defence cooperation. PANEL 2: EU Neighbourhood Policy and Tools The moderator, Malgorzata Bonikowska (President of the Center for International Relations) focused the panel on how the EU has ensured the coordination between ENP Review and other relevant related policies asking if this coordination could be better ensured. Steven Blockmans (Senior Research Fellow and Head of EU Foreign Policy Unit at CEPS) said that the ENP Review s policy framework has been a sort of CFSP PLUS encompassing pragmatism, multilateralism and value-based policy. As result, each country has a specific policy, but the framework can be ameliorated. He suggested avoiding the integration of the ENP in the EEAS and to focus instead on the communitarisation of the CFSP. Indeed, integrating the ENP in the EEAS would not be a good move since it would mean to give it into the hands of Member states again. Only with a full communitarisation we will be able to see effective changes. Petras Auštrevičius MEP (Member of the AFET Committee) added that the ENP should be even more dynamic allowing both different policy solutions for different countries and quick revisions. The EU should raise awareness of the different situations in the different countries and avoid compromising too much on human rights issues he reminded that from 2017 the EP was opposed to giving micro-financial assistance to some ENP countries that have not showed achievements in human rights because the interdependence between human rights and financial assistance is vital for really stabilising these countries. He highlighted also that the EU should remember that there are two sides of the ENP: the ENP countries have indeed other neighbourhoods too: Russia and China are looking at them too. He suggested to open conditionality for free trade and to set up more bilateral and trilateral relations with these countries: they are currently lost, and they need to talk with and hear from us. Dr. Bartlomiej Nowak (Foreign Affairs Secretary, Nowoczesna) pointed out that the main problem of the ENP is that it was invented in another era. The big geopolitical question the EU must answer is what the EU wants to do with its neighbourhoods does the EU want to keep them as neighbourhoods or does it want to transform them? He thinks that the EU should transform them via a Europeanisation process. Csaba Tóth, (Director of Republikon Institute, Hungary) focused on the lesson learned by the ENP which eventually has not worked as the EU expected. First, the neighbours perceptions have changed: the EU is not the only democratic example the Arab Springs demonstrated that there are other ways to be democratic that might be more appealing for certain countries. However, the EU vision is still a good one: many people from the Neighbourhood countries want to come to the EU the EU should, therefore, increase its spending on changing the public opinion of neighbourhood countries making it more pro- European (e.g. via visa, work permit, Erasmus projects). Second, the EU communication strategy must be improved focusing more on EU financial aid and on measures promoting the development of a pro- European civil society rather than on the injection of the EU regime.
At the question What would you like to see liberals advocating for in the realm of EU Security and Defence, more specifically in the realm of the ENP?, the speakers answered as follow: - Liberals should work on creating liberal parties in the neighborhood countries. Despite the European liberals support the ENP and are protagonists of the changes, liberal parties are still not strong in the neighborhoods. The strengthening of the liberal parties should come from the capitals not from the EU institutions [Petras Auštrevičius]; - Liberals should propose more innovative tools for transforming ENP countries [Dr. Bartlomiej Nowak]; - Liberals should propose to spend more money for Europeanising the ENP countries civil society focusing more on what the EU really wants to achieve. Moreover, liberals should think what they want to achieve on two big questions: Russia and Migration crisis. PANEL 3: Disruptive technologies: the future of warfare The moderator, Sebastian Vagt (Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung) focused the panel on the transformation of the nature and face of security and defence due to the current technological change. Brian Whitmore (Radio Free Europe) said that despite we technically are in a period of hybrid peace, our institutions and infrastructure are at war. Indeed, Russia is working to make us more like them through cyberwarfare and disinformation. Russia is not threatened by what the West is doing, but what the West is. He argued that technology could make our life easier and per se it is not automatically disruptive it is just now being used for malicious means and the EU should invert this trend. He agreed with Mr. Rasmussen: he is not worried about kinetic threats, but more about non-kinetic threats since NATO is not equipped to deal with the latter yet. He suggested both to make the EU and national institutions more resilient to such actions, and to demonstrate to Russia that an attack to our institutions is an act of war. He concluded saying that despite the EU having the capabilities to do cyber defence without cyber offence, it is hard to reach an agreement between the EU 28 on this matter. Practically speaking, he suggested threatening to cut off Russian import possibilities for the hardware they use to hack western societies adding that Silicon Valley would not like the suggestion, but it would show that the EU is serious in the threat of retaliation. Veronika Vichova (European Values, Prague) said that the Russian goal is that of undermining civil society rather than enhancing it: instead of free media they have RT, fake media outlets, GONGOs (Government- Organised Non-Governmental Organisations) Zbigniew Pisarski (President of Casimir Pulaski Foundation) thinks that the future of warfare is in the manipulation of cryptocurrencies, software and ransomware, disinformation and fake news. He said that the likelihood of retweeting fake news is now nearly 70%: it is more likely citizens retweet fake news than real news. He explained that it is also due to the fact that bad news is often more sexy and emotional. Real news often more boring so less attractive to share. Petras Auštrevičius MEP (Member of the AFET Committee) intervened saying that the EU has not been really engaged in fighting against these threats, but it has been sat observing and complaining. He reported that in the ALDE Group there is a debate about how to act, particularly on free speech and
privacy matters. In this regard, he asked to the panellists if they would advocate for a European troll factory like those operating in Russia to fight back. Brian Whitmore replied saying that instead of replying with the same means, the EU needs to get back to the basics on the narrative on the western values and communicate better what we protect and what society we want to live in. He brought as example that in Czech Republic, they do not teach history beyond the WWII which means that the new generations are losing the bigger picture of the Western civilisation. Veronika Vichova said that initiatives as the Baltic Elves should be encouraged and that the EP should keep calling for more funding for East STRATCOM the team indeed is not sufficient currently: it has only three people are looking at the East and they are seconded national experts. Zbigniew Pisarski went back to the educational part saying that despite sharing EU expertise and technical abilities to face these new threats would be a good start, education would work better: in this way, citizens would both recognise the threats and they would not be affected by tactics. Moreover, the EU should delegate less to national capitals and do something together for fully exploiting the disruptive technologies for our own benefit. At the question What would you like to see liberals advocating for in the realm of EU Security and Defence, more specifically in the realm of the ENP?, the speakers answered as follow: - Liberals should (1) support both the EEAS as a diplomatic service against the Kremlin and the East STRATCOM which seems to be the best equipped to deal with these new threats; (2) support EU and NATO cooperation on many areas via joint training, missions, simulations and wargames etc. this needs, however, to be pushed by the Member States; (3) talk about these sensitive topics and countermeasures even if sometimes controversial: the discussion need to be public. [Veronika Vichova]; - Liberals should articulate what it means to be a liberal and defend liberal and democratic society. He said that the World needs someone to articulate this vision a vision that explain that we are not playing a game, but that people need to decide if they want to live in a liberal state or in a gangster state. Liberals are losing this narrative battle at the moment and need to turn it around. [Brian Whitmore]; - Liberals should stand up and protect the freedom and liberties achieved over times in order not to let others abuse them.