The birth of an Agency

Established by EU leaders and chaired by former French President Giscard d’Estaing, the Convention set in motion a process that led to today’s European Defence Agency (EDA), starting with the decision in September 2002 to set up a dedicated Working Group on Defence. Chaired by Michel Barnier, the group had to investigate “the possibility of setting up an arms agency whose tasks (research, development, acquisitions) and operating methods would have to be studied in detail”, acknowledging that “there [is] in fact currently no cooperation on armaments at Union level”. The idea of a new Agency proved a consensus builder. In its final report, the group laid out some of the foundations of what would become the EDA we know today, although the final name wasn’t there yet.

“The setting up on an intergovernmental basis of a European Armaments and Strategic Research Agency was supported by many in the Group”, the report stated. “The Agency’s initial tasks would be to ensure the fulfillment of operational requirements by promoting a policy of harmonised procurement by the Member States, and to support research into defence technology, including military space systems. The Agency would incorporate, with a European label, closer forms of cooperation which already exist in the armaments field between certain Member States (OCCAR, LoI). The Agency should also be tasked with strengthening the industrial and technological base of the defence sector. It should also incorporate the appropriate elements of the cooperation that most Member States undertake within the WEAG.”

The working group laid out a few ideas regarding the way this future Agency could interact with its stakeholders. “All Member States which so wished could participate in the Agency, the composition of which would not be linked to other, limited forms of defence cooperation”, the final report explained. “Certain Member States could constitute specific groups based on a commitment to carry out specific projects”, which could also “be opened up on an ad hoc basis to countries which are not members of the European Union”.

Thessaloniki EU Summit

The Convention finished its work in July 2003 with the publication of a Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. Meanwhile, Member States were also busy preparing the European Council that would take place in Thessaloniki in June 2003. In its final conclusions, this Summit confirmed that a new European Defence Agency was on the agenda and would soon become a reality. “The European Council [...] tasks the appropriate bodies of the Council to undertake the necessary actions towards creating, in the course of 2004, an intergovernmental agency in the field of defence capabilities development, research, acquisition and armaments”, the final declaration stated.

The overall objective of the new body was briefly explained: “This Agency, which will be subject to the Council’s authority and open to participation by all Member States, will aim at developing defence capabilities in the field of crisis management, promoting and enhancing European armaments cooperation, strengthening the European defence industrial and technological base and creating a competitive European defence equipment market, as well as promoting, in liaison with the Community’s research activities where appropriate, research aimed at leadership in strategic technologies for future defence and security capabilities, thereby strengthening Europe’s industrial potential in this domain”.

The Agency Establishment Team

The next step was to prepare the ground for the new agency. Nick Witney, who would become the first EDA Chief Executive in 2004, played a central role in that process. “During the second half of 2003, a working group was convened in Brussels to make a reality of this and I was the British representative. As the deputy head of the UK MoD’s strategic affairs directorate, I travelled to Brussels regularly in the second half of 2003 to meet with my counterparts”, he recalls.

Even though Member States agreed that an Agency would be a good thing, there was no clear understanding at the time of what its exact role should be, or where it would be positioned on the institutional grid, Witney said. “The only thing we had was two sentences from the Thessaloniki Council, which served as a blank screen onto which different people projected different aspirations. By November 2003 it was clear that the only way out was to establish a special project team, with a brief to report by end April ”.

After some delay, High Representative Javier Solana picked Nick Witney to head this Agency Establishment Team. With time now very tight, he gathered a small team around him in a tiny office on the top floor of the Kortenberg building, home of the EU CSDP structures. The Team’s motto was “Form Follows Function”; that is, they set to one side the contentious legal and organisational issues until they had established a clear understanding of what the Agency would do and how it would do it.

The team liaised closely with an ad hoc representative group of all EU Member States, which they met with every two weeks. “It was a useful interaction”, Witney explains, “because it allowed us to reassure them but also to get their fingerprints on what we were doing to make sure they couldn’t repudiate it at the end”. While some argued the Agency should mainly focus on capability development, others pushed for a predominant armament role. “Our job in a way was to demonstrate that the Agency was able to do both, and moreover by doing both it could succeed better in each”, Witney explains. Reflecting this debate, the European Defence Agency name was finally adopted because “it was short, accurate, unconstraining”, Witney says, and also because anything more specific could have been seen as trying to push the Agency one way or another.

By the end of April 2004, the team was able to submit its blue-print for the new institution, clearing the way for Member State diplomats to finalise the legal documentation.

The race to become operational

On 12 July 2004, Member States formally adopted the Council Joint Action 2004/551/CFSP on the establishment of the Agency, EDA’s birth certificate. Soon afterwards, Nick Witney was appointed first Chief Executive. The second half of 2004 was dedicated to putting everything in place. Hilmar Linnenkamp joined as Deputy Chief Executive, and in October the first four directors were chosen, and began assembling their own teams. At the same time, the embryo staff began to define the Agency’s first projects and to establish links with a wide range of stakeholders, from military authorities to the defence industry. In autumn 2004, EDA’s Steering Board, made up of Defence Ministers from each Member State, met for the first time. They approved the budget for 2005, the first annual Work Programme, and the official structure of the Agency. By the end of 2004, the deadline set at Thessaloniki, the Agency was up and running, albeit in temporary offices in the Justus Lipsius building. With its staff growing fast, the Agency had to look for a permanent home: in 2005, it moved to its current Rue des Drapiers headquarters.