EU-ministers voor Defensie akkoord met plan om 'rapid response' troepenmacht uit te breiden (en)

The Minister of Defence, Carme Chacón.

The participating countries in the A-400 M programme achieve significant progress and foresee that this will help reach a definitive agreement in coming weeks

The Member States of the European Union today supported the Spanish proposal for improving rapid response capacity to deal with crisis situations or humanitarian emergencies such as the recent crisis in Haiti, according to the Minister of Defence, Carme Chacón, after the working sessions of the Informal Meeting of Ministers of Defence being held in Palma de Mallorca.

Carme Chacón pointed out that the EU i/27 will prepare a specific proposal to take to the formal meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council to be held in Luxembourg in April. It has also been agreed that a group of experts consisting of technicians from the Commission and from the Council be established in this meeting to prepare a European maritime safety strategy integrating civil and military aspects.

The Minister of Defence also highlighted the consensus reached on the need to strengthen the role of the European Defence Agency to enable it to build the capacities most needed for military operations, such as heavy transport helicopters for operations, promoting communications programs and obtaining satellite images, and implementing new technologies for combating improvised explosive artefacts.

With regard to strengthening the institutional role of the ministries of defence, ministers agreed on the need to empower ministers of defence meetings to take decisions on capacity building, providing ongoing operations with forces and resources, promoting the European defence industry and developing mutual assistance and solidarity clauses.

According to Chacón, it is essential to strengthen the meetings held by ministers of defence in order to promote the new Common Security and Defence Policy, and for this reason they will ask the High Representative to put forward some new specific proposals in the next Luxembourg meeting to progress further in this direction.

A-400M program

In the framework of the Palma de Mallorca meeting the countries participating in the A-400 M project held a meeting today to assess the progress of negotiations with EADS Carme Chacón underlined the commitment and intention of all of the countries involved to continue with most ambitious European industrial project currently underway.

The Minister of Defence underlined that EADS has accepted the terms proposed by the participating countries, and considers that negotiations are at the final stages. “Significant progress has been achieved in the conversations and we hope that this will be useful for reaching an agreement in coming weeks”, she added.

Coordination with NATO

Finally, the EU/27 discussed European Union-Atlantic Alliance relations with the Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fog Rasmussen, to achieve a stable cooperation framework for situations in which both organisations are present in the same theatre of operations.

In this respect, they agreed on the need for the capacities that both organisations can provide for current operations to be complementary, on improving transport capacity in operational areas and coordinating efforts with regard to improvised explosive artefacts.

On the first point, the Spanish Presidency will organise in June the Azor 2010 exercise, which both NATO and EU countries will attend, to train helicopter crews to operate in arid climates and desert conditions. On the second point, Spain has offered to allow the Hoyo de Manzanares Centre of Excellence against improvised explosive artefacts to be used by both the European Union and the NATO.

New ATALANTA Operation missions

The Minister of Defence explained that this greater collaboration between the EU and the NATO will also materialise in the framework of the Atalanta operation. Thus, the new efforts and missions agreed on yesterday can be complemented by NATO with a greater presence of its military resources to protect maritime traffic in the Gulf of Aden.

In this regard, Carme Chacón insisted on the importance of the agreements taken by the EU-27 to extend the Atalanta operation against piracy on the Somali coastline, stepping up the security and control of Somali ports the pirates operate from and neutralising supply ships.