John Gormley
Question:54 Mr. Gormley asked the Minister for Defence the developments regarding the EU Rapid Reaction Force. [18245/01]
Written Answers. - Rapid Reaction Force.
The Helsinki European Council in December 1999 agreed on a voluntary target for establishing capabilities for Petersberg Tasks. This target, known as a "Headline Goal", which member states aim to meet by 2003, involves the ability to deploy 50,000 to 60,000 personnel within 60 days and to sustain that deployment for one year. Some confusion has arisen from the description of the capabilities for the EU headline goal as a Rapid Reaction Force. It is emphatically not a standing army. Rather, it constitutes a pool of capabilities available to provide the means to carry out the Petersberg Tasks, tasks of crisis management, peacekeeping and humanitarian activities, the national elements of which can only be deployed on foot of decisions by each potential contributor. Ireland's commitment of up to 850 members of the Defence Forces to the EU headline goal is on the basis that Ireland maintains the sovereign decision over whether, when and how to commit Irish personnel to a Petersberg Task operation.
What the EU is doing in identifying capabilities is in many respects similar to what has been hap pening at another level at the UN with the UN Standby Arrangements System – UNSAS. At present Ireland subscribes to the UNSAS under which the State offers to provide up to 850 personnel for overseas peace support operations. This mirrors our commitment to the headline goal. At a time when the UN increasingly looks to regional organisations to undertake peace support operations on its behalf, it is very important to support such efforts at EU level. Consequent on the commitments made by member states at the capabilities conference in November last year a headline goal task force was established to collate and analyse the various commitments made in the context of a range of Petersberg Tasks type scenarios with a view to identifying any shortfalls in the required capabilities. A number of shortfalls have been identified and contributing nations have been requested to review their commitments in the light of these identified shortfalls. This work is currently ongoing. As part of the forthcoming Belgian EU Presidency it is proposed to hold a capabilities review conference in the autumn to seek to address any identified shortfalls in the headline goal capabilities.
Question No. 55 answered with Question No. 10.
Question No. 56 answered with Question No. 35.