Leadership
Let's start with asking that all important question: Who's in charge? The answer to the question is fairly easy. It's Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Have we seen her so far? Only very briefly.
The problem Ashton has is that she has 'competition' when it comes to Foreign Affairs. The competition are:
Spain, which holds the current Presidency of the Council of the EU.
Herman van Rompuy, the President of the European Council.
José Manuel Boroso, the President of the European Commission.
All the 27 ministers of Development Aid from the EU members.
Larger members making their own policy (think about France with its international donor conference).
This all makes that there is one guarantee with a EU answer to problems: it takes about forever before there's a general agreement on actions to be taken.
As a Dutch saying goes: with Baroness Ashton the EU isn't going to win the war. She was absent from European Defence Summit in Majorca on february the 24th, the first one since her installment. Javier Solana always attended these meetings and at this one NATO secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was also present. Ashton, however, decided that it was much more important to attended the inauguration of President Yanukovych in Ukraine.
That doesn't give much hope for the future.
Money
So the only thing that the EU has commonly decided on is to pledge €330 million in aid. (That only took them SIX days, so it was a really quick response in EU-time.)
But member states have also pledged money separately. The Netherlands national government has promised about €44.5 million besides the EU offer. So it's almost impossible to figure out what the total amount is. Especially because some of the amounts are hard to decipher. Let me explain why that is.
That Dutch promise is made up of the immediate offer of 1 million. Later 2 million was added and then another 41,5 million. The last amount came about because the Dutch minister of Development Aid promised to match what the Dutch public would raise during a telethon. But only in the Dutch press the distinction is made everywhere else you only see the total amount of €83 million raised by the telethon.
Assets
The EU has hardly any assets, but its members do. So in true EU style there was hardly any coordination of all the individual efforts.
So what happened was some mad dash to send planes to Haiti. But it's a long flight to Haiti from Europe and a fair amount of planes couldn't land in Port-au-Prince because the airport was clogged up. The delays weren't too dramatic though, so these small scale efforts went reasonably well.
But the large scale effort is a real disappointment. Where are all those European LPDs, LHDs and carriers that were built because the future, since the Cold War is over, is in Sea Basing and disaster relief?
A few in Haiti, but mainly not going at all. And that's disappointing, since in total the EU members have 6 CV's, 2 LPH's, 2 LHD's, 11 LPD's, 4 LSD's
Spain has sent a LPD, the UK sent a LSD, Italy a CV and the Netherlands offered a LPD.
But it took these countries more than a week to offer them in the first place and not all vessels actually went. The Dutch LPD HNLMS Johan de Witt didn't go. The reason is the UN has said it will not be needed any more by the time it will get there. Now there's a shocker. That's what happens when you wait too long with a decision.
But the Dutch can now take the moral high ground. They offered and the UN has said it isn't necessary.
The EU will also send a European police force of 350. We all know that's going to be an invaluable contribution next to those 20,000+ American soldiers and 2,000 Canadian soldiers.
Conclusion
The EU members have definitely taken the EU motto “United in Diversity” quite literally. The lack of a coordinated response is certainly what unites them.
Any EU members still wondering why the
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