France invokes EU's mutual assistance clause

On Tuesday, French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian invoked the European Union’s ‘mutual assistance clause’, according to Reuters.

It was the first time that it had ever been used and all 28 EU member states accepted it.

“This is firstly a political act”, Le Drian reportedly told a news conference after a meeting of EU defence chiefs.

Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty “provides that when a state is attacked, all member states must bring their solidarity to address the aggression”, French president Francois Hollande had said on the previous day.

The article invoked by the French authorities states that “if a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 [the right to self-defence] of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States."

According to the European External Action Service’s website, that article includes the caveat that “commitments and cooperation in this area shall be consistent with commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which, for those States which are members of it, remains the foundation of their collective defence and the forum for its implementation”.

Article 222, on the other hand, is considered to have been included in the Treaty expressly with terrorism in mind.

However, before being activated it requires that a member state of the EU has previously exhausted all the “means and tools” at the national and EU level and considers that “the situation overwhelms its response capacity.”

The Treaty of Lisbon was signed in 2007 and entered into force on 1 December, 2009.