Speaking to EU officials in a Berlin conference hosted by the German foreign ministry on Monday (29 January), the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance's secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said it is "astounding" how far from the envisaged "strategic partnership" the two institutions have remained despite attempts to bring them closer.  "Some deliberately want to keep NATO and the EU at a distance from one another. For this school of thought, a closer relationship between NATO and the EU means excessive influence for the USA."
"I do not share European instinctive fears about undue influence of the USA in European affairs anyhow. Europe is sufficiently self-aware – and they know it in Washington too," Mr De Hoop Scheffer argued. The NATO chief added that even the US has overcome original suspicions towards the EU's security and defence policy and does not view the policy as a potential danger or the alliance and the EU as rivals. (...)
The EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana - himself a head of NATO eight years ago - pointed out that defence spending still lags behind in Europe - in contrast to the US. "Only a handful of member states' defence spending is over 2 percent of gross domestic product," he said, stressing that the US spends twice as much with over 30 percent of budget put aside for research and equipment while Europeans invest less than 20 percent in new technology.