EU 'needs agreement on terror solidarity'

European Union nations should agree a "solidarity clause" in case one is subject to terrorist attacks, an influential committee has recommended.

The report, compiled for the convention on the future of Europe, led by Valery Giscard d'Estaing, also suggests Europe should have its own armaments agency and encourage member states that want deeper co-operation to sign mutual defence guarantees.

Chaired by a French European Commissioner, Michel Barnier, the committee proposes a formal gathering of EU defence ministers, more power for the EU's foreign policy supremo, and says the idea of a European military academy provoked "certain interest".

M. Barnier's document will be fed into M. Giscard's convention which is to draw up recommendations for heads of government who will rewrite the EU's treaty in 2004. Last month, a joint Franco-German paper called for a step change in military co-operation between the two countries, including the establishment of an armaments agency.

Although the UK proposed an EU defence initiative at an Anglo-French summit in St Malo in 1998, its relations with Paris on the issue have been strained. Britain is anxious to preserve Nato as Europe's bedrock of collective defence.

The document provoked anger from Eurosceptics. Geoffrey Van Orden MEP, Conservative spokesman on defence in the European Parliament said: "If this isn't an EU army then I don't know what is. At a time of great international crisis, when single-minded allied solidarity is needed, we find the EU pursuing its own selfish and divisive agenda." Mr Barnier's report says several members of the working group backed the idea of a collective defence agreement, and others opposed it.