Operationalisation
All in all, and despite the above-mentioned obstacles, Spanish actors have improved the operationalisation of their WGA capability within the EU framework. Having representatives from the various ministries in Spain’s permanent mission to the EU in Brussels (REPER) facilitates strategic coordination in a WGA-like mode. Their colleagues back in Madrid, on the other hand, do not have daily contact with the WGA management. The operational and tactical levels of coordination remain within the intra-ministerial chains of command, both in the capital and on the ground. Their interaction remains limited by the low number of genuine WGA missions and operations at the EU level involving multiple dimensions as well as by the lack of nationalled ones.
Spain contributes to the EEAS crisis system mechanism in several phases on a timeline ranging from early warning to response. It provides the available national information to the EEAS’s secretary general or to its deputy secretary general for CSDP and crisis response (DSG-CSDP) regarding the identification and assessment of a crisis or the related collection of data. It may also request that the DSG-CSDP pay attention to a potential crisis. The monitoring of the crisis is conducted at the national level in Madrid in close contact with the REPER in Brussels in order to foresee possible immediate actions. This process provides early warning and situational awareness, and it also facilitates any adjustments to advance and contingency planning on the strategic and operational levels.
Once a crisis-management concept has been approved in Brussels, Spanish military, diplomatic and civilian representatives assess the impact of strategic options for military and civilian actors. This assessment regarding a Spanish contribution is very close to the desired WGA way of management, and it goes from the national representatives in Brussels to their ministerial departments in the capital in order to nurture feedback within Brussels.
The presidency is informed about the situation, and any final decisions on CSDP missions are adopted by the government within the Council of Ministers. A contingency fund in the national budget provides funds for the deployment of troops under CSDP missions. The use of this extraordinary source of funding has been criticised for political and budgetary reasons, and the Armed Forces are facing further financial obstacles to participating in future CSDP missions and operations. Given these circumstances, it would be desirable for the EU’s WGA to increase the amount of common funds available for military operations (via the so-called ‘Athena’ mechanism) in order to keep the contribution of Spanish troops at its current level.
The civilian costs are covered better via various EU mechanisms, and their amount is too small to cause financial troubles for the Spanish agencies. Common funding ensures that Spain will continue providing humanitarian and development aid as part of EU-led projects. However, one should always keep in mind the reluctance of humanitarian actors to see security and development efforts mixed. In fact, in response to this resistance, the Spanish government has a state-owned construction company (TRAGSA) to participate in reconstruction tasks, which is another national asset for WGA actions.
The WGA model is being exported to fields other than that of external crisis management. After the creation of the European Defence Fund and the European Defence Action Plan, public and private stakeholders in Spain agreed that there is a need to come up with new institutional arrangements for cooperating with EU institutions and action plans. For example, there has been the establishment of an inter-agency working group including representatives of the ministries of Defence, Foreign Affairs, Industry and Finance, of the key industrial associations, and of other organisations.
The outcome of this WGA coordination has been very relevant so far. It has allowed various stakeholders – including those in the defence sector – to see the opportunities and risks involved in EU initiatives, and it has contributed to raising public awareness about the need for a European Industrial and Technological Base (EDITB). Another example is the creation of a WGA model for preventing disinformation during electoral periods. Spain had already joined the Helsinki-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, and it created a model based on the division of labour among the National Intelligence Centre (Ministry of Defence), the Centre for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures (Ministry of Interior), and the Cyber Defence Command (Ministry of Defence) under the leadership of the secretary for communications of the presidency of the government. Although it is too early to access the effectiveness of this new WGA-like arrangement, the relevant issue is that the presidency has realised the need to manage complex crises using a WGA model. Given this acknowledgement, it is possible that a WGA could be applied to Spanish responses to external crises in the future.