Brussels, 23/02/2011 (EDD) - The first informal meeting of the EU defence ministers of 2011 is being held on 24 and 25 February at the Royal Castle of Gödöllõ in Hungary, and will also be attended by the high representative of the EU, Catherine Ashton. Over two working sessions on Friday, the ministers are expected to pursue discussions started at the last informal meeting in Ghent on pooling resources, cooperation between the EU and its partners and an initiative of the ministers of the Weimar Triangle (Germany, France and Poland) of December last year. Amongst other things, they will be requested to give the green light to the implementation of this initiative, which proposes a new impetus for the European security and defence policy. Concrete proposals will be put forward in the second half of the year.
The meeting will start on Thursday evening with a dinner, which will focus on the three current military operations of the EU: - EU NAVFOR Atalanta, the naval operations of the EU off the coast of Somalia: discussions will focus on the operations to fight piracy, the EU's strategy towards the Horn of Africa and potential support for the operation to reinforcing the maritime capabilities of the neighbouring countries; - EUTM, the training mission for the Somali security forces in Uganda: amongst other things, the ministers will discuss possible courses of action for this mission, which ends in July; any decision on extending the Monday mission will depend on the results of the integration of the first wave of Somali recruits trained by the EU, once back in Somalia; - EUFOR Althea, the EU's mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina: the talks will come as part of an overall examination of the EU's strategy in Bosnia currently being carried out by the EU27; at this stage, there is no question of removing the mission's executive mandate, which has just been validated by the UN for the rest of the year. The dinner will be attended by the commanders of EU NAVFOR, General Buster Howes, and of EUTM, Colonel Ricardo Gonzalez Elul. The commander of the Althea mission, General John McColl, who is shortly to leave his post (he will be replaced on 4 March by his fellow Briton, General Richard Shirreff), will not attend.
Two working sessions will be held on Friday. The first will be given over to crisis management issues, and, in particular, will feature a discussion on proposals by the ministers of the Weimar Triangle and Catherine Ashton's response. It is worth noting that the three countries in question plan to hold seminars in the near future on the three most important subjects of this initiative, which are: battlegroups (Poland), capabilities (France) and the chain of command (Germany). The following subjects will also be discussed in Gödöllõ: civilian and military synergies in the conduct and planning of operations, the activities of the European Defence Agency (for the first time Claude-France Arnould, the new executive director of the EDA, will attend), the sharing and pooling of resources, and the battlegroups of the EU (GT-1500). The bulk of the discussion on the EU rapid reaction forces will focus on generating new units to be on standby in 2012. It has not, however, been ruled out of the ministers will also discuss the concept and financing of the battlegroups. One idea, which has been raised increasingly frequently, is that it would be sensible to pay for the use of these forces out of the common budget earmarked for military issues (Athena fund) rather than out of the national budgets of the member states which train a battle group. As regards capabilities, the Hungarian Presidency remained cautious. Its objective from the meeting is to achieve “a critical mass of member states willing to carry out the voluntary analysis of capability” which could be shared.
The second session will focus on relations with NATO, and will be attended by Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and on CSDP support for United Nations operations. In their talks with the NATO Secretary-General, the EU27 will concentrate on cooperation currently underway, particularly in terms of capabilities. Projects developed jointly by the EU and NATO currently deal with medical support and the fight against improvised explosive devices. There are also plans for the two to launch a new project in the field of protection from chemical, bacteriological, radiological and nuclear threats (CBRN). (A.By./transl.fl)