WGA 2020 | Luxembourg | Operationalisation

Operationalisation

Question:
What administrative structures and processes are in place to back-up the policies described in the previous section? How does your country operationalise a WGA and with what success? What are the key operational enablers and ‘disablers’ of a WGA in your country?

Luxembourg Expert

Patrick Heck

Minister Plenipotentiary, Policy Planning and Global Issues, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs

Patrick Heck is currently Minister Plenipotentiary for Policy Planning and Global Issues in Luxembourg’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MFA). After two years in Customer Relations at the Bank of Sante Fe in New Mexico (USA), Heck joined the MFA in 1995, spending five years as a desk officer responsible for Asia/Oceania and EU Common Security and Defence Policy within the Directorate of Political Affairs. For the next five years, he served as either Deputy Permanent Representative (2000–2005) or Charge d’affaires a.i. (2002–2003) of Luxembourg’s Permanent Representation to NATO before spending four years as a legal adviser to the general manager of the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency (NAMSA) in Capellen, Luxembourg. After joining Luxembourg’s National Intelligence Service in 2009 as the Head of the Operations Branch, he served as the organisation’s Director for over five years beginning in March 2010. Between January 2016 and April 2019, he served as the Director of the Department of Defence in the MFA. Heck earned an LLM and Master of Public International Law at Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg, France, in 1993. The following year, he earned a national law certificate at the University of Luxembourg.

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Above, I have listed the various interdepartmental bodies and committees or working groups that ensure the functioning of a WGA in Luxembourg. Of these, the merger of the three key bureaucracies in 1999 has been the key enabler. The Political-Military Committee is the operational arm of this integrated structure. It operates a permanent review of issues related to international crisis management in addition to making recommendations on policy and decisions. This committee meets at regular intervals, holding at least five ordinary meetings per year, and is chaired by the director general for political affairs. It reports to the three members of government (i.e. the MFEA’s minister of foreign and European affairs, minister for development cooperation and humanitarian affairs, and minister of defence), and it involves the embassies when called for by its agenda.

At the political level, when in session, the Government Council reviews international affairs on a weekly basis under a dedicated agenda item. Once a crisis exists and crisis-management measures have been taken by the EU or NATO, the High Commission for National Protection (HCNP) is activated and implements the declared crisis measures on a national level.

This Government Council has working groups that are activated depending on the particular nature of the crisis. These working groups are under the authority of the High-level Council of National Protection (CSPN), an inter-ministerial committee chaired by the HCPN. The composition of the working groups varies depending on the nature of their areas of competence. During a crisis, both the Political-Military Committee and the HCNP report to the government through the minister for foreign affairs and the prime minister, respectively. This WGA enables the committees to have full situational awareness of all elements of a crisis, which in turn helps them make better-informed decisions.

One should note that, as a purely advisory body, the above-mentioned Inter-ministerial Committee for Development Cooperation is not involved in the daily (i.e. operational) management of an international security crisis. However, it reviews the lessons and/or needs from existing or past crises when defining its policies, priorities and budgets, together with representatives from the ministries of Foreign and European Affairs, Defence, Home Affairs and Justice, who are members of this committee by law.

Through these integrated structures, Luxembourg has been able to make timely, integrated contributions to the EU’s missions and operations, to NATO’s operations, to various international trust funds, and to peace initiatives. To list a few examples, Luxembourg has contributed to UN operations in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (UNPROFOR); to EU missions in Mali (EUTM) and Somalia (EU NAVFOR Operation Atalanta); and to several NATO efforts, including ones in Bosnia-Herzegovina (SFOR), Kosovo (KFOR), Afghanistan (ISAF and the Afghan National Army Trust Fund), Lithuania (Operation Resolute Support) and Central Asia (demining and demilitarisation trust funds).

Luxembourg Report