-- "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, building on existing deployable headquarters."

-- "Interested parties 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."

-- The "primary candidate" to command other operations linking the EU and NATO would be the deputy military chief of NATO, who is by custom a European.

-- The four countries agreed to pool resources for a "rapid reaction capability" built on a Franco-German brigade with Belgian commandos and Luxembourg reconnaissance elements taking part.

-- The four EU leaders also called on the convention writing an EU constitution to incorporate in its text the concept of a "European Security and Defence Union" (ESDU).

The ESDU would "gather those member states that are ready to go faster and further in strengthening their defence cooperation".

Participation in the ESDU would imply:

-- boosting defence spending;

-- joining major procurement projects, such as the A400M heavy-lift transport plane being built by the Airbus consortium;

-- pooling military capabilities and officer training;

-- a willingness to take part in UN peacekeeping operations.

In addition, the EU four called for:

-- a "solidarity clause", binding EU member states together in the event of an attack on one, and a "common security" element, seen by sceptics as encroaching on NATO's turf;

-- the creation of an EU agency to develop and buy weapons, so as "to increase the European military capabilities and strengthen the interoperability as well as the cooperation between the armed forces of the member states";

-- a European command for strategic air transport, built around the A400M;

-- the creation of an EU protection capability against nuclear, biological and chemical attack;

-- a rapid reaction ability to rush in humanitarian aid within 24 hours of a natural disaster;

-- an EU security and defence college, as well as specialist training centres for A400M, helicopter and ship crews.

SPACE.WIRE