EU: The leaders of Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg have agreed to set up a joint military headquarters next year and have called for an EU military planning capability for operations that do not involve NATO.
The leaders said after their meeting in Brussels that the initiative was not designed to undermine NATO or to antagonise the United States but to strengthen what is known as the European pillar of the transatlantic alliance.
German Chancellor Mr Gerhard Schröder said he expected the proposals to win support from all 15 EU member-states and the 10 countries due to join the EU next year.
"In NATO, we do not have too much America, we have too little Europe, and that is what we want to change with the proposals we have made," he said.
French President Mr Jacques Chirac said the new military headquarters would not be a rival to NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces in Europe (SHAPE) but would reduce duplication of structures among national governments.
"The aim is not to decouple European Union and Atlantic Alliance defence efforts. This contribution should enable European defence to make a quantitative leap forward," he said.
Britain, Italy and Spain made clear before the meeting that they believed it was badly timed and potentially divisive and the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, yesterday dismissed the initiative as misguided.
"What we need is not more headquarters. What we need is more capability and fleshing out the structure and the forces that are there with the equipment that they need," he said.
The four leaders called for the establishment of a European Security and Defence Union that would be open to all EU member-states but which no country would be required to join.
They called on the Convention on the Future of Europe to approve a solidarity clause obliging EU countries to come to one another's aid in the event of a terrorist attack and to allow member-states to form a mutual defence pact. They backed a proposal at the convention to set up a European arms procurement and strategic research agency and a European defence academy.
The leaders agreed to take seven specific steps towards improving defence co-operation between their countries, including measures to boost the effectiveness of the EU's Rapid Reaction Force and joint action to provide protection against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
The most controversial proposals are for the creation of an embryonic European military planning capability and a military headquarters for operations that do not involve NATO.
"With a view to improving command and control capabilities available to the European Union as well as to NATO, our four defence ministers will take the necessary steps to establish, not later than 2004, a multinational deployable force headquarters for joint operations," the leaders said in a joint statement.
The plan represents a substantial watering-down of Belgium's initial proposal for headquarters that would be entirely separate from NATO and the leaders were at pains to stress their continuing commitment to the transatlantic alliance.
"Interested states will establish a nucleus of a collective capability which, instead of national means, they would make available to the EU for operational planning and command of EU-led operations without recourse to NATO assets and capabilities," their joint statement said.
But one senior EU diplomat said the issue of new military structures remained "neuralgic" for many EU member-states.
"There is a fair amount of unhappiness about this around the Union," he said.
The proposals will be discussed by EU foreign ministers when they meet in Rhodes later this week and by EU leaders at a summit in Thessaloniki in June.