Just before the Prague summit, negotiations with a view to NATO enlargement revealed the importance of the Agencies in a quite unexpected way: the majority of the questions posed by the new potential members (the Baltic States and countries in Central Europe) concerned the Agencies, and not the expected issues of politics, military questions, or the functioning of the delegations and the Council. The second surprise was that the team supporting the Secretary-General proved incapable of responding to most of the questions: one example was ‘... can Lithuania use the services of NAMSA as soon as it becomes a member?’ The third surprise was that, in the weeks that followed, the Secretary-General realised that these directors of little-known Agencies (all of whom he nominates, and of whom he is the formal chief) controlled more employees than he did, and managed a combined budget that was larger by an entire order of magnitude than those managed by the headquarters of his own organization.

A wide-ranging enquiry then took place; since the Secretary-General had little difficulty in persuading the various national ambassadors to share his frustration, this operation also threw up national issues.

Finally, should France be concerned by the problem of these NATO Agencies? Are they important? Are they important to France? What is their function in the Alliance? What influence, be it insidious or beneficial, might they exert on the development of European defence?