Over the last few years, the European Union (EU) has begun a process of reflection that should lead it to reform its aid policies for peace
and stability. In doing so, it would like to extend its competence in the field of military assistance. At first glance, this objective appears simple. However, it is not. Indeed, when the Union ventures into the world of defence, things generally tend to become more complicated.
A common, though contested, interpretation of the European treaties is that the EU cannot finance the military sector through its standard budget1. To circumvent this obstacle, it has therefore decided to launch, from 2021 onwards, an instrument financed by the Member States on an ad hoc basis, with an exclusively military vocation: The European Peace Facility (EPF). The new Facility should bring together the main non-budgetary tools already available to the Union to provide limited and circumscribed support for certain defence activities, with a view to widening their scope of action. More specifically, it should bring together:
-The Athena mechanism, the budget that enables the EU to finance its common costs for the military crisis management missions it deploys;
-The African Peace Facility endowment funds used to support the military dimension of African Peace Support Operations (PSOs)2, separating them from the development cooperation programmes that pursue civil objectives.
The EU's ambitions have been the subject of intense debate in Brussels. The problem is not so much the process of administrative rationalisation, but rather the idea that the Union could, in this context, increase its competences in the field of defence. On this point, Europeans had been entangled for more than two years in endless discussions about the form and nature of the new Facility, particularly with regard to what it should actually finance. Should it support military activities directly, or should it do so indirectly, as the development cooperation instruments have done so
far? Should it finance transfers of lethal weapons, and if so, under what conditions? How should it work in practice?
The objective of this note is to re-examine this debate (which was mainly happening in Brussels) in order to open it up to our African partners. The stakes of the EPF are indeed important to understand not only for Europeans, but also for African societies, which are ultimately among the ones mainly targeted by this new tool. This study therefore intends to analyse what is being said in Brussels, in order to echo it in Africa, through the organisation of seminars and meetings.