CONTRARY TO THE TWO DOMINANT, ALBEIT DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED, TYPES of forecasts that were both highly fashionable a few years ago, it appears more and more clearly that the headaches related to the EU-NATO conundrum are here to stay. Those who, in view of the initial difficulties of establishing mutually acceptable relations between the two organizations, were talking about teething problems likely to be replaced, in due course, by a harmonious insertion of the new-born European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) into the Atlantic system, were just as wrong as those who saw in it yet another occasion to toll the death knell of the North Atlantic Alliance. As it is, neither of the two scenarios seems close to becoming a reality any time soon.

The reason is very simple: transatlantic relations have arrived at a stalemate point. A crucial, though precarious, moment of balance, characterized by the fact that the United States is no longer able to prevent Europe from gradually moving towards more independence, while the Europeans are not yet ready to fully achieve their emancipation. In EU-NATO terms, this equation is reflected, on the one hand, by the US incapacity to block the launching of European defence within the frameworks of an organization of which they are not part (the EU), and on the other, the attachment of Europeans to the upholding of an organization (NATO) that institutionalizes their subjection to American pre-eminence in the security field.

This article proposes to focus on relations between the EU and NATO, by highlighting the political interests and strategic designs which determine progress or, most of the time, the blockages and pseudo-progress one can witness there. Indeed, two problems, closely related to one another, come out as the bottom-line from any analysis, whether it bears on the European integration or NATO, or a fortiori on the relations between the two. The first one is linked to the nature and general evolution of the transatlantic relationship, the second to the modalities of various integration mechanisms. For the European countries, when it comes to their relations with the United States, these two problems appear in limpid terms: dependence versus autonomy, and integration versus sovereignty. The key aim of this article is to raise and to decipher these stakes such as they appear in the different fields (institutional contacts, cooperation on the ground, planning, capabilities, assigned missions and procurement) of the relationship between NATO and the EU. In order to better put the subject into its context, the first section is devoted to the relations between the Atlantic Alliance and European defence before the latter was taken charge of in the EU framework, notably with the launching of ESDP in June 1999. After the enumeration of the major issues around which all initiatives and debates are articulated as from this date, the article will finish with an outline of what could be deemed the only scenario which, on both a strategically realistic and democratically legitimate basis and under radically different conditions from those experimented until today, could guarantee a lasting preservation of the transatlantic partnership.

Brief survey of the past

By way of introduction, some defining elements in the historical context of the current EU-NATO relations will be underlined. However, before this is possible, it is important to make a clear distinction between structural continuities and the

(Hajnalka Vincze, The EU-NATO syndrome: spotlight on transatlantic realities, Journal of Contemporary European Research, Volume 3 Issue 2, Summer 2007, 75,800 characters)