Experts: Neither EU nor NATO can guarantee security 100 per cent

Report on EU security guarantees to be ready this autumn

Hanna Ojanen

Teija Tiilikainen

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Finland can never get any security guarantees that would be 100 per cent effective - guaranteeing automatic aid in an emergency, says Hanna Ojanen programme director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
      "It is by no means self-evident that either (the EU or NATO) would defend Finland even if Finland were a member of both", Ojanen says.
      Speaker of Parliament Sauli Niinistö (Nat. Coalition Party) has called on the government to ascertain what kind of a security guarantee Finland could get from the EU.
      An answer to Niinistö's appeal is coming soon: Foreign Minister Teija Tiilikainen, the political secretary of Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva (Nat. Coalition Party) is drawing up a report on the significance of the EU security guarantees, partly at the urging of Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.
      Security guarantees are part of the EU's draft constitution, which was never approved because of the opposition of some EU member states.
      Moves are still underway to get parts of the treaty into effect. The issue will be discussed next week at an unofficial EU summit in Lisbon.
     
Both Tiilikainen and Ojanen feel that it is clear that the EU's security guarantee does not apply to NATO members alone.
      Both submit that the notion that NATO countries have better security guarantees within the EU stems from the mention in the EU treaty that NATO is the foundation of its members' common defence, and the body that implements it.
      Ojanen sees this as merely a technical matter in the treaty: NATO's existence needs to be noted in the EU treaty.
     
As Ojanen sees it, NATO is moving away from the idea of regional defence, and the EU is moving toward it - albeit in a different manner.
      "NATO used to have plans for the arrangement of the defence of its own area. If Finland had been a member of NATO, it is certain that there would have been plans on how Finland's territory is to be helped, and in what manner", Ojanen explains.
      "It is by no means self-evident that NATO would have a patent solution for the defence of Finland", she says, envisioning a situation in which Finland would be a member of NATO.
     
Tiilikainen says that in her report she will examine how the EU's security guarantees would work.
      "The implementation of security guarantees will not just happen one morning by noting that this article needs to be activated", she says.
      The article would be enacted when tension rises between the sides of a conflict. The EU would be active already in these phases.
      As Tiilikainen sees it, EU security guarantees are more binding than those of NATO. The fifth article of the NATO Charter, which includes the obligation to provide aid to an ally in need, leaves each individual country the option to consider whether or not to participate in a particular effort.
      On the other hand, she feels that the NATO security guarantees are "on a much firmer foundation".
      "The EU clause is political, and no military system has been built on its foundation, and it is a very significant difference between these two. There is no automatic mecahnism that can be put into action in the EU system", Tiilikainen says.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Parliament calls for report on EU security guarantees (30.11.20006)
  Minister Kääriäinen: Finland must spend more on defence, or join NATO (2.11.2006)
  Vanhanen warns of risks of yearning for EU security guarantees (12.9.2005)
  Poll: Finns increasingly uncertain over NATO; no increase in fear of Russia (11.9.2007)

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