General Affairs and External Relations Council (Defence)
C. Roger, H. Morin
© Il Consiglio dell’Unione europea
- On: 10.11.2008
- In: Bruxelles
The defence ministers of the 27 EU Member States met in Brussels on 10 November.
Hervé Morin, the French Minister for Defence, chaired the “Defence” session of the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) in Brussels on 10 November. After the meeting in Deauville, this second meeting of the defence ministers under the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union was marked by France’s determination to focus on the orientations set by the President of the French Republic to re-launch European defence.
At the initiative of Hervé Morin, the Member States confirmed and formalised the commitments that they had touched upon in Deauville to strengthen European military capabilities.
They signed several agreements to launch the following projects, which are still open to the participation of other Member States which wish to join.
Space policy
1/ Arrangements to make government-source imaging available to the European Union Satellite Centre:
- Helios 2 Arrangement (Belgium, Spain, France, Greece and Italy);
- Cosmo-Skymed Arrangement (Italy);
- Sar-Lupe Declaration of Intent (Germany).
2/ Letter of Intent on the MUSIS project (Germany, Belgium, Spain, France and Greece) to develop permanent, military space surveillance capabilities of the EU Member States.
European force projection and deployment capabilities
3/ Agreement creating a European airlift fleet (Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Slovakia);
4/ Agreement on the creation of a A400M multinational unit (Germany, Belgium, France and Luxembourg);
5/ European Carrier Group Interoperability Initiative (ECGI) (Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and United Kingdom) allowing to improve European force projection capacities based on aircraft carriers, airline groups, naval units and submarines equipped with cruise missiles.
The 27 also adopted other initiatives:
1/ Launch of an initial training programme for young European officers, based on the ERASMUS model.
2/ Agreement aiming to make the Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR) the executive arm of the European Defence Agency.
They also lent their support to the European Defence Agency for developing European capabilities, by requesting it to prepare two equipment programmes (maritime mine clearance, surveillance Unmanned Air Vehicles) and a research programme on technologies of the future.
They called for the strengthening of the European defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB), notably through of the European Defence Agency and the creation of a genuine internal defence market to foster the emergence of key European industrial groups.
All of these advances are formalised in a declaration for the development of military capabilities, signed by the 27 defence ministers, called For a European capabilities and armaments policy.
Within the framework of the joint “Foreign Affairs - Defence” session, they approved a Joint Action which will contribute to launching the ATALANTA naval operation to combat piracy off the Somali coast, under British command. They agreed that the EU Operation Althea in Bosnia Herzegovina had fulfilled its military objectives and agreed on the possibility of shortly concluding the operation depending on the situation in the country. They will continue to observe the EUFOR Tchad/RCA operation extremely closely, particularly with a view to transferring authority to a United Nations military operation in March 2009.
- Updated: 29.12.2008
