The Director-General of the EU Military Staff, Vice Admiral Hervé Bléjean, said on Wednesday 14 April that the synchronisation of international players in Mali, including the EU’s CSDP mission, EUTM Mali, was improving.
“We are aware that more synchronisation between international players, including European ones, is required to have even more conclusive results, but we are on the right track and with the right momentum”, he told the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defence.
According to him, the cooperation between EUTM, Minusma, Operation Barkhane and the G5 Sahel is optimal on the ground. “We are really moving towards the establishment of a concept of continuity between the training that we give in a practical way and then hand over to Barkhane and Takuba so that they can operationalise the units that we have trained based on the context on the ground”, explained the vice-admiral. And while, according to him, Barkhane is very happy with the operations it carries out with the forces that have passed through EUTM Mali, it is necessary to work on the force’s autonomy of action.
This empowerment could be further enhanced by the non-executive support that the EUTM mission will now be able to provide. This should help the forces “to fully organise themselves for full combat effectiveness”, said Mr Bléjean.
EUTM Mali’s new mandate allows for non-executive accompaniment of Malian troops trained by the mission. “Active participation in operations is still prohibited, but it is an essential element to further assess the tactical elements”, Mr Bléjean said. The mission is working on a first pilot case that could take place in northern Mali.
The mission is now regionalised. According to Mr Bléjan, in the coming months, the training could be extended to Burkina Faso, which has already signed a legal framework for EUTM’s action on its territory, and to Niger.
Burkina Faso was interested in training trainers, and the vice-admiral said he was “very hopeful that we will be able to start a first action by the summer”. For Niger, Mr Bléjean announced the forthcoming integration of a German task force into EUTM Mali, which was initially a bilateral initiative between Germany and Niger to train special forces. The Political and Security Committee (PSC) gave its approval on 4 March and the Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) is due to submit the EUTM review to the Member States next week.
In order to carry out its new tasks, the mission will be expanded from 700 to 1,300 troops. While Member States have responded to the force generation to a level of 95%, Mr Bléjean expressed concerns about the advisory task force, where only 29 of the 78 posts are filled. “But this task force is the core business, to accompany all the necessary reforms of the security and defence sector”, he warned. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)