On Tuesday 22 November, the European Parliament called on the European Council to be the driving force behind the progressive definition of a common EU policy in defence matters and to provide additional financial resources to ensure its implementation.
According to the report on the European Defence Union by Urmas Paet (ALDE, Estonia), which the MEPs adopted with 369 votes in favour, 255 against and 70 abstentions, Parliament is calling for the immediate launch of a strategy to define the broad outlines of the constitution and implementation of the European Defence Union.
The Parliament is calling for a reflection on the creation of permanent command and control staff for military operations under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). It also calls for this policy to be revised from the ground up, based on a principle of solid defence, effective financing and coordination with NATO. According to the MEPs, the member states should set in place multinational forces within the permanent structured cooperation and make these forces available to the CSDP.
Calling on the member states to observe the objective of spending 2% of GDP on defence and allocating 20% of their defence budgets on equipment identified as necessary, the MEPs call for a European Defence Semester, to assess the progress made in the member states' budgetary efforts on defence. The Twenty-Eight should move to joint procurement of defence resources and pool some of their non-lethal equipment, the MEPs add.
The MEPs argue that the European defence market must be fair, accessible and transparent. They call for the EU's investment in research projects in the field of defence to stand at a minimum of €90 million over the next three years.
Parliament also emphasised the need to work more closely with NATO. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)