 Well good afternoon everybody you're all very welcome here today I think we will have a very interesting discussion so I will make a very short introduction. We have two outstanding speakers today. We have Brian Hayes, MEP, former TD and former leader of the Finnegale Group in the Shamad. He will talk to us on a recent paper produced by Finnegale MEPs relating to Ireland's role in security and defence of Europe. Our other speaker is Dr Barbara Kunz. She works with the French Institute of International Relations, an independent think tank. She has extensive experience in this area that we are discussing which today will be France, Germany and the three dimension of Europe's defence debate. Dr Kunz has worked in Sweden, France, Germany and in the United States also so I think we would have a very interesting discussion. As usual this is the papers are the presentations are on the record and the discussion afterwards is under Chatham House Rules which is that they are kept within these walls and anybody having a mobile phone no doubt has turned it off I have to make it quick check I think mine is turned off so we will start straight away and maybe Brian if you would start off. Thank you. So good afternoon ladies and gentlemen Mary thank you very much indeed for the welcome and the introduction and just can I put on record my congratulations to the IIEA for their excellent position papers that were published some months ago on the future of Europe debate and because I know it's very very informative discussions that we need to have right now we're really framed by those debates so many thanks indeed for that and also for the work that goes on in Brussels and elsewhere in terms of providing space for myself and other colleagues to talk about Europe on a regular basis and we all very much appreciate that those of us who are privileged enough to be MEPs so really what what I want to do today is ask and answer three questions if I may the first question is why did we produce this document as for Finnegale MEPs and the second and try to answer that and secondly to go through it rather briefly to you mean it's self-evident what we're saying not the most earth shattering thing but to go through it as best we can and then finally the last question to to to ask this question about the future of potential common security and defense policy common defense policy call of what you will in a context of the upcoming MMF negotiations the multi-annual financial framework for the European Union on the basis of a European defense fund what that means and what it means especially for Ireland are there opportunities for Ireland so there are the three questions I'm going to pose today if it's okay before saying that it's important to say that I think what one of the essence of a the rational legal system of government that I studied when I was in college is this simple contract between the voter and the government that if things go wrong for the citizen the voter the state is there for them and if there's probably the most fundamental area of protection that democratic societies provide is is is defense and security and sense of protection and I think it's changed of course the new threats that are there are evident for everyone to see and it's important in that context that we reflect on how we are providing security and defense in our own country and across the European Union of which our members but there's a wider debate as well I think and it's around the question of EU fundamental values values like freedom tolerance human rights respect for diversity respect for the separation of powers and the truth is of course that these are EU universal values and their values that we have to stand up for and defend and the rather depressing thing is if one looks at the developments political developments that are taking place right now in Poland or in Hungary and there are huge challenges for the European Union how one responds to that if one sees some kind of diminution of those rights to other EU citizens and therefore this debate I think is taking place in that in that context I think it was professor Ivan Krustaf and his remarkable book after Europe that very slight book but it really it really packs a punch in terms of speaking about this notion of the deja vu are we going through in Europe some kind of deja vu moment a bit like what happened before the Second World War this notion that disaster can't come again well history shows this disaster can come again if you don't stand up for the things that you believe in and make sure that those values are universally applied so it is in a context of ongoing threats that Europe faces between unmanaged migration potentially disorderly Brexit looming challenge on the trade war front with President Trump that we have got to deal with these issues and new issues of ice describe as counterterrorism cyber security human trafficking how does the debate on security and defense fit in to trying to find some solutions to those problems and how do politicians respond to that on the first question that I asked at the start why did we produce this document well well I think first and foremost and we have a responsibility to reflect the debate that is ongoing we have joined Pesco I welcome very much the fact that doll Aaron has approved at the decision of Ireland to join Pesco and I think we have to be part of that debate where I sit in the European Parliament on a daily basis I meet colleagues from different member states from different regions of the European Union who are very concerned about ongoing security and internal and external security threats to their own member states and we have to be able to to reflect that so the debate in the common defense union is something that I think has to be part of our discussion I think the the I think on Pesco I think we've made a very good start at the fact that we have signed two of the 17 projects thus far one on maritime surveillance and the other on security training is a good start now you could you could challenge the government to say could we have done more and I'm sure the government's reply it will be we've taken an incremental response to this we're going to see how it goes up and I fully accept that and I think probably the government's assessment of incremental engagement in Pesco is the right way to go but I think the bigger issue is not so much what we're doing right now is the bigger issue is will we be part and parcel of trying to divide devise and design the next number of projects which will be coming down the track I think that will give us a much greater ownership and participation in Pesco and one one criticism I would make of what happened in the doll just last year was the very rushed nature of the debate and joining Pesco in my view is a very good thing and things in politics require debate big full comprehensive debates and it seems to me that when one rushes debates like that it is not a good place to be because immediately things are thrown up and allegations are made which which don't help so from our perspective as a group of four finnigale MAPs the fact we've joined Pesco is a very good signal to our colleagues in the European Union and is something worth celebrating the second reason we decided to put out this document and is that we have to reflect other people's concerns as well in terms of this debate there are huge concerns in relation to what's happening in Russia ISIS how mass migration is being resolved are not resolved as the case may be if one looks at recent research by the Pew Research Centre it's very clear that this these questions are foremost in the minds of voters as we go into the next European Parliament elections especially in continental Europe and it seems to me that one of the responsibilities of Irish MEPs it's not just to argue what things that Ireland needs of course we're elected to do that but also try to reflect the broader European debate on these matters at home and to reflect that in a way which is understandable and so I think it is important that when I speak to colleagues in places like Latvia Lithuania Estonia and they speak to me about the concerns about President Putin that I try to reflect that it's as much an act of solidarity on my part and my colleagues part to say that this if it's an issue for the Baltic countries it should be at least an issue for Ireland to understand what is taking place there and the same is true in the debate in Finland and Sweden on how they're dealing with the neutrality question how they're responding to to to what they see perceived to be Russian aggression I have to understand that too so we produce this document as a basis also trying to understand why this is a concern in other member states of the European Union and I think thirdly the reason we produce this document it really is we have decided to stay in the European Union it is our principle means of engaging with the world through this vastly important economic and political bloc called the European Union the fact that Britain are leaving the European Union means that I think we have to become more integrated with Europe and I I think you know in every political negotiation and there are there are negotiations that are important my concern I've articulated this before is that there's a sense in Brussels that we're less than supportive on some of the things that are required to make Europe work better there's a mentality of a doctor know about Ireland right now that's a hard thing to say to my colleagues in government which which I do from time to time it's a hard thing to say and to civil servants to diplomats and but I have to reflect that I think we can do more and I think the other argument is if we want to really win out on our core objectives of the country in other areas we've got to become more integrationist I argue security and defence is one I argue the EU budget is the other is the other I argue that doing more on migration is another area making sure the capital markets union works there is a diplomatic game that has to be played here in terms of safeguarding Ireland's real objectives if we are to succeed at all so this is a discussion document which is code for saying there is no agreement in finnegale about this is always a useful thing in politics just but I discussion documents and I know that I've been around too long to tell you otherwise and I have to say also can I say at this juncture I was really impressed by the finafall defence spokesperson at the time who responded to the depesco debate in the doll deputy Lisa chambers who gave a really fine contribution on that occasion to the debate and showed I think great leadership she subsequently got a new job in the finafall front bench but what really this document is about is trying to have a broader political debate in trying to see away see away forward so what what have we said in our document well firstly we said we need to involve ourselves fully with the ongoing debate on European defence union project to see exactly what it means what it doesn't mean and my sense is that we are not moving anytime soon to European army and despite the no posters of many years ago who use you used to describe vote no to stop conscription of your young people and we haven't seen that anytime soon and I don't think we're going to see at any time into the future either this idea of our 17 and 18 year olds being kind of dragooned into a European army don't see that happening right now the other area is one of mutual defence and I don't see that happening because it is effectively illegal in Ireland because of our of our of our situation what we have said in the document is however that if the outcome to this debate throws up the option of a mutual defence we should look on it on its merits but that if there was any fundamental change it would require a referendum of the Irish people and I'm very clear about that if there was any mutual defence requirements from the debate it would require that now as I said earlier we do have under the Lisbon Treaty the solidarity clause that is there and we've seen that put into effect in relation to Mali when the Paris attacks came so we are moving ever so slowly towards a more integrated position on on European defence union so we need to be we need to be clear about that providing mutual assistance to other member states and difficulty I think is a key moment on the triple lock and as you know the triple lock requires the UN the EU side the UN the doll and the government what we've said is we might look at that on the question of EU our UN resolution so when a circumstance for the UN for political reasons in the Security Council couldn't agree and we saw that in the Macedonia case most famously if if if one of the big countries refused to agree that we could look at engagement on the basis of an EU resolution and we think that's at least open for consideration we've also said that the doll needs to be consulted I have no principle objection with the doll deciding where we to commit troops absolutely agree with that and but I do think we need to be more flexible on the exact nature of the triple lock and third area is I think something that I think is very clear and dear to Irish hearts is then the whole question of peacekeeping humanitarian relief the Petersburg tasks which was part of a previous treaty of course I think was Amsterdam at the time and we think that's a very important area for Ireland to continue to focus on what we're seeing in operation Sophia is something that Irish people support and the government's decision to incrementally do more in operation Sophia over time is something that we very much support and we've agreed with the white paper in terms of the size of the defence forces we've been a little bit more ambitious in looking for a 10,000 they say in the white paper 9,500 and at the moment of course the GDP spending is about 0.3% it's as low as Luxembourg it's the lowest of all and we think we should be over a period of years up to about 1% and but there again that will require of course on where the economy is we've argued for a central intelligence unit within government bringing together the guard the and the defence forces even though they do different things on the intelligence front making sure that we have at a central intelligence area the capacity to understand that intelligence and the capacity to use that intelligence for our own needs and also for that of our colleagues needs in other states of the European Union and we've argued a much more integrated position on cybersecurity in terms of a working strategy with all our EU partners and we've argued for the establishment of a National Security Council to report and assess threats analyzed across and to bring together all of the political parties, NGOs, academics and indeed those the public sector we've also argued for an honest admission that we do have a defence industry in this country no one talks about it there are lots of very small and medium-sized Irish businesses part and parcel of a supply line part and parcel of research in defence but no one talks about it and we should recognise that and also recognise the fact there are very significant other neutral countries like Austria which has a significant defence industry and spend significantly in that area as well and we've also come finally for a review of the bilateral cooperation between the EU and sorry between Ireland the UK as a consequence of Brexit and we do have a section on neutrality but as I said at the lunch just now neutrality really isn't the biggest part of this document and it's not because we're frightened of taking it on and we've used other words there that might describe Irish neutrality into the future non-aligned militarily or independent non-aligned or non-nuclear non-aligned the bigger issue right now is to see what we can get from this process of integration and what we can give to the process of integration within a framework of a neutral country so you know having fantastic ideological debates about neutrality really you know it's great stuff it'll have hundreds of thousands of people in the in the teacher's club day in day out but I'm not so certain it actually will get us very far so our focus is really on a few practical measures that will help in that regard and my final question that I posed is this how does all of this fit in to the ongoing debate on funding because there's a number of things coming down the track which I just like to flag and the good news is we're now a net contributor since 2014 we're not honing up more money into the European Union but prepare yourself for a political debate in the next 10 to 15 years where people will start saying actually we shouldn't be giving any money to the European Union forgetting about the 70 billion we've received since the early 1970s and also the good news in the context of the next MMF the multi-annual financial framework is that probably Ireland will be contributing depending on where the economy is somewhere between two to four billion over that seven year financial envelope which will get a lot of political coverage and a lot of finger wagging from various newspapers and politicians about what Europe is doing with the money having forgotten about the fact of the last 40 years so I think we need to have a debate at home about the EU budget because it's clear in the proposal that has come from the Commission that there is a big new focus on security and defence and there's a big new focus on innovation and the next line of attack is going to be in the run of the European Parliament elections by some people I suspect that farmers are losing out because on the basis of the defence industry is winning so we just need to just plug that myth a little bit. Firstly I want to say I welcome what the Taoiseach said in Strasbourg in January where he said he is prepared to go beyond the 1% of GNI which others are not prepared right now. Very important message from Ireland that we are prepared to pay more as a rich country that has done very well in the European Union and I welcome what he said in terms of that. I also think it's right to say we should in the new budget see exactly what's in it so we have a figure of about 19 to 20 billion cut three ways. One is this question of connecting Europe allowing for infrastructure across the European Union, secondly the area of research and thirdly co-financed projects under the European Union and my central argument which we might come back to later on, apologies for going on too long is this, I believe the European Defence Fund is something good for Ireland. I think it's good for our defence forces, it's good for security capacity, there are many projects that we could pitch for with other countries which would provide savings for our defence forces and I think we should see the opportunity of the European Defence Fund as a means of explaining to Irish voters why it's important to work and collaborate with EU partners. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Brian, I think you have helped to move the debate on from looking at what the definition of neutrality is to what the definition of solidarity within the context of the European Union is and that is a much bigger debate. So pass the floor to yourself to some aspects, Dr Barbara Coons, on that wider debate of defence and security in the context of Europe. Thank you very much and thank you for the invitation here to Dublin to talk about, well, French-German defence cooperation but always in a European context, obviously. Before I start, maybe just a small disclaimer and that is that when I say we, I mean Europe and I don't even mean the European Union but I really mean Europe, this continent. So when I talk about European security, it's not necessarily only CSDP but I will get to that and also what I would like to do in the 15 minutes I have here now is to not really get into all the nitty gritty of Franco-German defence cooperation on tanks and what have you but really to try to see where France and Germany fit into the larger picture of the European defence debate. Now for France and Germany, I think that 2017, 18 and perhaps also 19 if the German government survives the current crisis will be really decisive years, especially in the field of defence also others. But we've really seen new impetus in defence cooperation after years during which there was not much going on in the Franco-German relationship as such but in defence in particular. So that since last July, so the election of Emmanuel Macron and then the first Franco-German summit last July, as I said, we've seen some spectacular announcements and very high ambitions of what France and Germany want to do together. What was perhaps announced as a flagship measure back then was the alliance on the Sahel that is French and German cooperation on Africa which is also a long-standing French hope to get more help in the south. But I guess the most spectacular announcement was certainly in the industrial field and the announcement, it started already earlier, cooperation on a future tank and then in July last year the announcement that France and Germany would buy basically a new airplane together. This has surprised quite a number of observers. It's been becoming more concrete with just new letters of intent signed this week. So this is way in the way. And also perhaps to mention at this bilateral level is that Paris and Berlin are again after 1963 with the originally illusory treaty that really set the course for reconciliation between the two countries and cooperation are now negotiating a new illusory treaty which will also contain a chapter on defence. Now on the other hand all these announcements notwithstanding French and German defence cooperation has always been very difficult and somehow being the stepchild of this very close bilateral relationship both sides have always had better friends to put it that way elsewhere. And France and Germany are extremely different at the level of strategic culture and this has of course not changed. And the perhaps I would say still most important difference between the two is at the very basic level and that's the level of urgency. How important defence and security at all are in the various national contexts and they're to be perhaps a bit blunt but don't have time to be very very precise here. I'd say that for France defence obviously is a must-have whereas for Germany it's still something of a nice to have but something that's not really really at the heart of the political debate. I look at the defence budgets in both countries and the debate surrounding them is certainly very enlightening in this context. So to move on a bit quickly here on this Franco-German defence relationship I think that as of 2018 what you can see is that France is still lacking the partner it would have liked to have in Germany and that the disappointment is perhaps even peaking again which is due to the fact that the Germans in recent years have announced this new discourse that sometimes is labelled the Munich consensus and Germany wanting to see more responsibility on the international stage which has been seen in Paris not perhaps by everybody but by many people as a normalisation of German defence and security policy and well four years on I think it's increasingly clear it's Germany is still Germany and Germany is not becoming France and that for instance well the German willingness to engage in military operations is still not the same as the French and looking at these big projects that I just mentioned these announcements on tanks and planes it is also important to keep in mind that this might sound big and it certainly is big because if it works it has the potential to restructure the European defence industry but there are also clouds hanging over it with the potential to poison the rest of the defence relationship and that is the Franco-German debate on exports because you once you build these products you will have to export them in the end because neither France nor Germany will buy enough of it to make it economically sustainable but so much about the purely bilateral relationship what I think is even more important is to look at France and Germany in the overall context of the European and again when I say European I don't necessarily mean you and the European security and defence debate and I think here this debate in fact has three different dimensions or three debates that are often that often take place in a separate manner of course they are in reality they are linked but there's there's a number of instances where you can also see quite quite what we can see that we're actually talking past each other here in Europe and these three three dimensions of the defence debates mean that we've moved on from these times when we're talking about the transatlantic link I mean before it used to be a debate on do we want to have security with the nature or do we want the EU but those those are day those days are gone today we have three debates as I see it and that's the first one is the east versus south debate where we should look at where are the dangerous things the second one is then confined indeed within the EU context of CSCP and that is basically about the level of ambition of CSCP what we should do with CSCP and this also boils down to the question of what EU strategic autonomy actually means I'll get back to that in a minute and then I think the third dimension of this debate is sort of the elephant in the room here and that is the future of US role in ensuring European European security now looking at the first the first dimension the east versus south dimension I guess here it's very important to distinguish the security policy dimension from the defence policy and dimension in terms of security east versus south means that the south is basically about managing chaos and preventing it from spreading the east is about keeping up the European security order so these are already very say asymmetric task if you look at it through a defence lens this is the debate about crisis management in the south and collective territorial defence in the east I think that's important because depending on what capital in Europe you are everybody's talking about defence but in Oslo when they say defence they talk about collective territorial defence you go to Paris they talk about crisis management and just that not I'm not always sure that there is enough awareness of these differences of course east versus south and in reality the debate makes no sense whatsoever because we simply need both and we also have the north which is probably a third distinct thing to look at I mean it's also implicitly about Russia but the environment is so specific that the north would be a third dimension here now if you look at France and Germany within all that common wisdom has it that the French look south and the Germans look east which is right and wrong at the same time because predominantly yes but then they're both also engaged in the like other direction to put it that way and that also means that for France there still is a certain priority on the south which means that France has a priority in terms of force projection and crisis management and interventions which you can very clearly see from President Macron's intervention initiative for instance there were also the French and German debates you had about what Pesco in the end should be where there was this French willingness to make it into something where those willing and able would actually I mean I'm oversimplifying but in essence I don't think it's wrong to say that the French initial idea at least about Pesco was to make it something that would help us in the south now the Germans didn't really want to make Pesco into something to deal with the east but the Germans more saw Pesco as European integration but if you look at current developments in German defence and military policy it's quite clear that the collective territorial defence dimension is officially at the same level now than interventions but in reality this Germany is going back to having this as the structural defining dimension of its security policy and it's in good company there I mean at least in terms of number because throughout northern Europe throughout eastern Europe to the extent that they ever abandoned it this is this is the new reality today so here you have a first France and Germany being in different ends of this debate which does not of course not mean that positions are mutually exclusive but difference they are there the second dimension is about CSCP and what to do with it and basically the definition of what strategic autonomy for the European Union as it's written in the the EU global strategy what that does mean and I guess that I already hinted at the fact that there are quite different approaches here as well with the French approach being about well mainly about interventions and having more capabilities available to actually do something and a German approach that is much more focused on seeing this as another instance of European integration rather than actual defense policy which is of course also linked to the fact that looking at the first dimension for Germany it's rather more the East which also means that it's rather more NATO that is dealing with the real defense stuff leaving CCP as an instance of European integration which has its value as such but is not so much about making the Europeans able to go south the third dimension the US dimension and the question of whether we can continue to rely on on Washington here again France and Germany are located at sort of different different ends of the the debate and how to put it I mean but both both leaders both Macaulay and Merkel have called for well seeing the problems with Trump and taking Europe's fates into our own hands and so on but if you look at the reality that's following from it there's not so much so much going on there what is clear however is that a if the United States were to disappear I mean just painting scenarios here if the US were to withdraw from ensuring European security the blow is much much bigger for Germany than it is for France I mean France is a nuclear power it ensures its own survival to really go to to the ultimate question for Germany it's a contrary for Germany it's the United States that ensure survival of the nation so the the starting point in that debate is also quite quite a different one and it's a debate that we're not yet having that we should be having and I'm not saying that because I'm anti- American or anything but just because I think a look at the realities means that there is real big structural change underway in European security and we should talk about this now rather than wait another 10 to 20 years but the starting point here for France and Germany is quite different also in just pure psychological terms as well so if you look at these three dimensions of the current European security debate you will see that France and Germany are not really on the same page on any of them of course the the differences between France and Germany are still smaller than the difference are between various other EU member states but it is quite complicated and to in order to connect this these three dimensions or debates about these three dimensions it also it's also important to keep in mind that things are getting even more complicated by issues such as for instance PESCO where you suddenly have potential at least to blur the lines between between all these boundaries that we were used to CCP being exclusively about military interventions I mean it's in a treaty it's definitely like that but then if you look at for instance that the military mobility project that's where you start to see blurred lines between all these southeast collective defence and so on which to me is good news because that's a move closer to thinking about European security instead of thinking CCP and NATO and all these other pillars but what it does it puts some more pressure actually I think on all European states to really have a much more strategic approach to to European security because it all becomes connected and what you do within PESCO has consequences on what you do do elsewhere but as I said there is a number of divides within Europe and what France and Germany should do in my opinion or have the the obligation to do is to actually lead a way in debating that not presenting the solution but to to put this on the table but which does not does not mean that everybody else is exempt from doing so but that this is the time where really European security is something that should be should be a relevance in all debates and that should not be left to debating in in these old categories of well Atlantis is versus European yes and so on but to really take all these three dimensions into account and try to come up with a unified vision of that I think my 15 minutes are over so I will end on that and then forward to the discussion