mr president the report on nato's role in the eu's security architecture reflected different approaches in the european parliament between on the one hand opinions which continue to look at nato as the organisation offering the strongest security guarantee to its members and opinions which on the contrary see less and less need for nato in a world in which apparently there are no major threats at least not comparable to the former soviet one
however until now there was no member in both organisations willing to give up the nato security guarantee even if the eu is putting weight behind its defence and security effort and has introduced its equivalent of article five of the washington treaty the solidarity clause in the lisbon treaty
to my mind the relationship between nato and the eu the most important component of the larger transatlantic relationship should be one that is naturally complementary and mutually advantageous to two partners who are compelled to work together in responding to today's multiplying and increasingly complex challenges
to that effect existing mechanisms see the berlin plus agreements could be improved new ones see the proposal for an eu operational headquarters should be contemplated obstacles see the negative impact of the cyprus problem should be overcome and most important mutual perceptions should be definitely improved
thus on the one hand one should stop considering nato as an adversary and on the other the eu as an appendix to nato
as mentioned the truth is that in practice the two partners could very well cooperate with each other mutually complementing one another
for that the report has been amended and hopefully the end result has become acceptable to many of us
