Helsinki Headline Goal

The Helsinki Headline Goal was a military capability target set for 2003 during the December 1999 Helsinki European Council meeting with the aim of developing a future European Rapid Reaction Force. There was much interest in the idea of a single EU military force, and inexact characterisations of the initiative (which was not much more than some headquarters arrangements and a list of theoretically available national forces) led to imprecise journalistic depictions about a unified European Army. Following the initial declaration in December 1999, the formal agreement on the Headline Goal was reached on November 22, 2004 and according to statements made by EU officials the first units will be deployable in 2007. Since January, 1st of 2007 60,000 soldiers have been available for a possible European Rapid Reaction Force who are potentially deployable for at least a year.

In 2004, a new target was set: the "Headline Goal 2010".

The Headline Goal was built upon an earlier bilateral Franco-British Joint Declaration adopted at St. Malo in December 1998. The St. Malo Declaration said that the European Union ought to have the capability for “autonomous action backed up by credible military forces” as part of a common defence policy. The St. Malo Declaration laid the political foundation between France and the Great Britain, which in turn facilitated the launch of the European Security and Defence Policy and the formulation of the Headline Goal.

Under this plan, the European Union pledged itself during the Helsinki summit to be able to deploy rapidly and then sustain forces capable of the full range of Petersberg tasks (as set out in the Amsterdam Treaty), including the most demanding, in operations up to corps level (up to 15 brigades or 50,000-60,000 persons) to be capable of intervening in any crisis that could occur in an area where European interests are affected. The aim was to make those forces self-reliant, deployable within 60 days and over 4,000 km, and sustainable in the field for a year. This means the force would actually have to number around 180,000 troops so as to provide rotating replacements for the initial forces. The Petersberg tasks include humanitarian and rescue tasks; peacekeeping tasks; and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking. EU-led forces assembled in response to a crisis would last only for the duration of the crisis and it would be up to the member states themselves to decide whether, when and how to contribute troops.

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