The Nordic Countries and the European Security and Defence Policy

132 NATIONAL DEFENCE AND EUROPEAN COOPERATIONTable 6.1. Indicative upper limits of the Petersberg Tasks, by analogy and descriptionCountry Analogy DescriptionFrance Desert Storm, 1991, Deliberate Force, 1995 ‘Restoring order’Germany IFOR/SFOR/KFOR, 1995–2001 ‘Peacekeeping’Italy Desert Storm, 1991 ‘Restoring order’Netherlands Allied Force, 1999 ‘Crisis management’Sweden IFOR/SFOR/KFOR, 1995–2001 ‘Peacekeeping’UK Allied Force, 1999 ‘Crisis management’Source: Garden, T., Clarke, M. and Quille, G., ‘Achieving the Helsinki Headline Goals: ananalysis of European military capabilities in the light of the process of developing forces toserve the European Security and Defence Policy’, King’s College London, Centre for DefenceStudies, Nov. 2001.management, citing Operation Allied Force. For other countries, such as Italyand Sweden, it was the existence of a legal mandate, specifically a UnitedNations mandate, that mattered more than the scale and demands of the operation.The constructive ambiguity that was a strength of the Petersberg Tasks asoriginally defined by the Western European Union (where they were understoodin the context of the Balkans crises of the 1990s as peace-support orrobust peacekeeping operations at the higher end of operational demand) hadbecome unhelpful in the context of the ESDP and under the new Helsinki HeadlineGoal process.This ambiguity is less problematic at the lower level of the operational scale,although an increased emphasis on policing roles within the ESDP may stretchsome states’ understanding of what constitutes a lower-level action—perhapsexplaining why the European Gendarmerie Force, established in September2004 by France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, was launched as amultilateral initiative outside the EU framework. At the high end of the scale,while the ambiguity of the Petersberg Tasks and the targets set by the memberstates in the Helsinki Headline Goal may help to mask political differences, it isa problem for planning purposes, in particular for those working in the EUMCand the EUMS. The latter came to hope that the issue would be more effectivelyaddressed by the Headline Goal 2010 (see below).The operational reality: ‘ESDP goes live’Reality on the ground provided the first indication of the type of concrete operationsthat the EU might conduct under the ESDP, and it also helped to speedup agreement between the EU and NATO on access to NATO assets. On 31March 2003 the EU launched the EU Military Operation in the Former YugoslavRepublic of Macedonia (EUFOR Concordia). European Union forces tookover from NATO’s Operation Allied Harmony with the aim of contributing furtherto a stable, secure environment in the FYROM and ensuring the implemen-