PARLIAMENTARY CONTROL OF ARMED FORCES IN PORTUGAL[1]

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2009/05/22

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ARLIAMENTARY

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IN

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[1]

Inês de Carvalho Narciso[2]

In Portugal, decisions on the use of military force are made with only marginal parliamentary involvement. According to the Portuguese constitution of 1976, the Assembly of the Republic (AR) has the power to “authorise the President of the Republic to declare war and to make peace”[3]. However, since “war” is no longer a legitimate institution under

international law, this provision does not apply to any of the military missions of the period under consideration.

It is for the President, in the framework of his or her competences in international relations to

“(d)eclare war in case of effective or imminent aggression and to make peace following a proposal by the Government, the advice of the Council of State, and the authorization by the Assembly of the Republic, or if it is not possible for the Assembly to work, by its Permanent Committee”[4].

In 1982, the Law of National Defense and Armed Forces (LDNFA)[5] addresses decision-making in defense politics in more detail. The LDNFA states that the Assembly of the Republic is responsible for assessing the Government’s agenda and is the main actor responsible for overseeing the

implementation of the national defense policy [article 7 (1)]. The Government is responsible for the formulation of the national defense policy [article 7 (2)] and the Council of Ministers defines the general guidelines in terms of its implementation [article 7(3)]. Finally, the opposition parties must be consulted by the Government [article 7(4)].

Most importantly, the LDNFA established the “Superior Council of National Defense” as the main consultative body for national defense policy. In Article 46 (1), the LDNFA holds that “the Superior Council of National Defense is the specific consultation organ for issues related to national defense, organization, functioning and discipline of the Armed Forces”. This organ is chaired by the President of the Republic and its members are the Prime-Minister, various Ministers (National Defense, Foreign Affairs, Internal Affairs, Finance, Industry and Energy and Transports and Communications), the Chief of Defense, the Representatives of the Republic before the Autonomous Regions of Azores and Madeira, the Presidents of the Regional Governments of Azores and Madeira, the President of the National Defense Committee of the Assembly of the Republic, the Chiefs of Staff of the Navy, the Army and the Air Force and finally two members of the Assembly of the Republic [Article 46 (3)].

The LDNFA specifically attributes to the Minister of Defense the competence to “coordinate and supervise the actions concerning the fulfillment of military commitments resulting from international agreements”[6].

The LDNFA also establishes in its article 47 (1) f) that it is for the SNDC “[i]n the exercise of its consultative/advisory functions (…) to report on:

f)The engagement of Portuguese military contingents abroad, in the context of the international commitments of the Portuguese State, in missions which do not result from the state of war.” Although the Superior Council on National Defense includes two Members of Parliament, its

establishment did not challenge the principle of executive dominance.[7] In terms of consultation the SCND has a more important role than the Assembly of the Republic. All in all, the SCDN is a highly “governmentalized” organ as at least half of its members are members of the government or from the same party. This fact decreases an independent influence by the AR in the decision of deploying Portuguese armed forces abroad and conversely strengthens the executive role of the government. Further secondary legislation followed in 1991 when the Law on the Organization of Armed Forces[8] specified the Superior Council’s role for military missions. Article 2 (4) holds that “[t]he specific missions of the Armed Forces (…) are defined by the Superior Council of National Defense, after proposal from the Ministry of the Defense, which follows a project issued by the Council of Chiefs of Staff.”

In 1997, a constitutional amendment introduced a new article 163 i) according to which the Assembly of the Republic shall “(m)onitor the involvement of military contingents and security forces abroad”. [9] Consequently the LDNFA was also revised in 1999. In article 40 (1), the revised version of the LDNFA holds that “[t]he Assembly of the Republic is the body that represents all Portuguese citizens. For this

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reason it is its responsibility to legislate and monitor the government’s actions in what concerns decisions about National Defense and Armed Forces”. Article 40 (2) c) reaffirms the article 163 of the CRP, giving the AR a broad role. This role is however based on monitoring and does not foresee any kind of supervision, co-decision or prior authorization mechanisms.

The above mentioned competence of monitoring is exercised by the Assembly’s National Defense Committee.[10] This Committee integrates a reduced number of Members of Parliament proportional to the general allocation of seats in the Parliament and deals more directly and in more detail with national defense policy.

Until 2003, no secondary legislation spelled out how the government’s obligation to consult the assembly was to be interpreted. Only in 2003 did the Law which regulates the monitoring of the engagement of Portuguese military contingents abroad by the Assembly of the Republic[11] specify parliament’s role further though again without questioning the prime decision-making power of the executive. The Law establishes that the Assembly of the Republic only participates once the decision is already taken by the Government. Generally it has the right to monitor the engagement of the armed forces, which implies the Government’s duty to communicate the decision: “(t)he Government’s decision as to engage Portuguese military contingents abroad is previously communicated to the Assembly of the Republic, in order to be assessed and further followed-up”(Article 3). The monitoring is based on reports made by the government which shall be presented to the Assembly of the Republic each six months and when the mission is over (within a period of 60 days)[12].

In the context of the 2003 Law, the Democratic and Social Center-People’s Party (CDS-PP) presented a proposal which would increase the degree of participation of the AR in the process of decision-making. The bill presented by the CDS-PP suggested the introduction of the principle of joint preparation of the plan of engagement of Portuguese armed forces abroad both by the Government and the AR (through the National Defense Committee); and also the obligation to the government to previously consult the AR[13].

In 2005 there was another initiative to further legislate to limit the intervention of Portuguese armed forces abroad by the Left Block (BE)party had proposed to give parliament a veto power over most categories of military missions but its suggestions did not carry the day.[14]

For this reason the AR has no major influence in the process of decision-making as to engage military contingents abroad, only being responsible for the monitoring a posteriori of the decision-making process, not being established any mechanism of co-decision or previous authorization to the Government by the AR.

Overall, the main feature already stated is indeed the centrality of the Government in what concerns the formulation and decision-making in the national defense policy domain, which leads to a low degree of parliamentary control of Military Missions.

In practice, Portuguese governments have always made an effort to ensure a broad consensus among the main political actors before military forces have been sent abroad. On the eve of the Iraq war 2003, government was prepared to contribute to the US-led coalition but the President of the Republic was against any military participation without a UN mandate. As a consequence, the Government decided to sent gendarmerie forces (GNR).

Due to the lack of consensus within government and political parties about the deployment of aerial military means to Kosovo the Portuguese Government decided to deploy 3 F16 but only to operations of escort and patrol with no engagement in combats. After the UNSC resolution 1244 the Government eventually decided to engage Portuguese Military forces contributing with 300 men to the KFOR[15]. This said, there is both formally and informally a predominance of the executive branch in the decision-making process of the engagement of Portuguese military contingents abroad, consequently the AR has little influence and competence to participate in the legislative process relative to the control of military missions.

[1] Trabalho feito no âmbito de um Projecto de Investigação sobre o Controlo Democrático das FA's em Democracias, do Peace Research Institute de Frankfurt".

[2] Mestranda em Law and Politicsof International Security, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. [3] Article 161 m), Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.

[4] Article 135 c), Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.

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[6] LDNFA, article. 44.º, n.º 2, d).

[7] The two Members of Parliament are elected by a two thirds majority to represent the Parliament in the Superior Council of National Defense (article 40 (2) LDNFA).Normally the deputies elected are one from the ruling party, and the other from the main opposition party.

[8] Law n.º 111/91, of 29th August.

[9] Constitutional Law 1/97 (4th Constitutional Revision). Article 107 of this constitutional law introduces this new provision in the CRP, consulted at http://dre.pt/pdfgratis/1997/09/218A00.pdf. [10] “The monitoring of the AR, stated in this law, will be carried out by the National Defense Parliamentary Commission.”, Article 6, Law nº46/2003, 22nd August.

[11] Law n.º 46/2003, of 22nd August, consulted at http://dre.pt/pdfgratis/2003/08/193A00.pdf. [12] Article 5, Law nº46/2003, 22nd August.

[13] Draft Law n.º 62/IX, September 2002 (CDS-PP).

[14] Draft Law n.º179/X, November 2005 (BE) (For example in its article 6 the draft law includes the principle of previous authorization from the AR. Notwithstanding it contains an exception in what regards the type of missions to which this principle applies to, namely the military maneuvers or actions which result from international agreements as long as they fulfill the principle of international legality and the principle of non-aggression.)

[15] Between 2001 and 2002 the Government alleged financial constrains and decided to pull out the men between 2001-2002, in order to increase the Portuguese military participation in East-Timor.

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