On Thursday 25 October, General Michail Kostarakos, the permanent chair of the Military Committee of the EU, said that military mobility in Europe was a great success for the EU.
“A big success for the EU”, the General told the press following the two-day meeting of the Military Committee in Brussels. “We are very optimistic, it is moving very fast and very effectively”, he added, explaining that the military side had done its work and it was now for the politicians to make the final decisions.
The General explained why the EU had succeeded where NATO failed. “For years, NATO has been working on military mobility without any success. The reason is very simple: NATO is a military alliance and it was approaching the whole thing in military terms. When this was given to the EU, the EU made an integrated approach”, he explained. He added that military mobility was not just about the movement of troops, but also questions of taxation, legislation, constitutional and economic issues and customs. “All these things cannot be solved by a military alliance. We have our own approach, an overall governmental approach, we believe we have solved the problem”, he added.
In October 2010, the Commission launched its roadmap to facilitate military mobility (see EUROPE 11902). This mobility has also been the subject of a project within the framework of Permanent Structured Cooperation and EU/NATO cooperation (see EUROPE 12061).
Kostarakos explained that there was no problem in the military domain between NATO and the EU, rejecting alleged problems of duplications and the friction this has caused. He said that the EU and the Alliance are “two different animals”, one being a military alliance and the other a political and financial organisation with a military dimension. However, he regretted that it had not been possible to do more with NATO, adding that the Italian General Claudio Graziano, who will take over from him as permanent chair of the Military Committee on 6 November, will work to overcome the obstacles to greater cooperation. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)