RESOLUTION 389 on CONFRONTING A DIFFICULT FISCAL ENVIRONMENT: ECONOMIC CRISIS, FISCAL CONSOLIDATION AND THE RISK OF EUROPE'S STRATEGIC IRRELEVANCE *

The Assembly,

1. Recognizing that the extraordinarily difficult fiscal conditions European and North American leaders currently confront pose an array of institutional, economic, social and political challenges;

2. Acknowledging that this fiscal crisis has potentially profound security implications for NATO countries insofar as it undermines their capacity to underwrite the costs of national defence at levels commensurate with traditional measures of security;

3. Concerned that the international monetary system has grown unstable and that structural budget deficits and rising sovereign debt levels are undermining market confidence and weakening trade;

4. Worried that slow growth and budgetary constraints undermine global trade and have also triggered unacceptably high levels of unemployment, especially among young people, and that this poses a threat to social cohesion, political stability and wellbeing;

5. Recognizing the political difficulties associated with supporting international development assistance but convinced that support for development represents a cost effective security and economic investment;

6. Concerned that the global economic crisis could adversely affect allied defence budgets at a time when formidable security challenges persist;

7. Worried as well that some NATO members are shouldering more of the relative defence burden than are others;

8. Recognizing that this burden-sharing dilemma could undermine the solidarity which has long held together this Alliance;

9. URGES member governments and parliaments of the North Atlantic Alliance:

a. to foster greater stability in the international monetary system by introducing and implementing much needed reforms in US and EU member fiscal and social-economic systems and in the international monetary system which remains dangerously unstable;

b. to ensure that the public understands that even in difficult economic times, investing in security, diplomacy and international development assistance is both worthwhile and in the national interest;

c. to abstain from making spending cuts at a level that would damage national and international security in this period of fiscal consolidation;

d. to undertake greater bilateral and multilateral co-operation on defence research and development, and procurement as well as in force specialization and integration to generate new efficiencies to counteract the impact of tight fiscal conditions;

e. to ensure that defence spending is underwriting critical capabilities rather than serving some other purpose like subsidizing a particular firm or keeping local employment levels up which are worthy goals best pursued by other means;

f. to conceive of NATO as a potentially powerful agency of efficiency-generating defence and security co-operation among its members and to encourage the Secretary General of NATO to form three task forces:

i. to identify areas in which NATO countries might better co-operate to ensure more efficient use of scarce defence funding;

ii. to improve consultation on defence budgeting processes among allied countries and thereby help ensure that defence cuts in any one allied country do not impose undue burdens on any of its allies; and

iii. to deepen procurement co-operation;

g. to implement fully co-operation between NATO and the European Union on defence and security matters and to seek new ways to improve this important relationship.

[*] : Presented by the Economics and Security Committee and adopted during the Plenary sitting on Monday 10 October 2011, Bucharest, Romania.