The chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defence, Nathalie Loiseau, said on Wednesday 8 December that cooperation between the European Union and NATO, often described as excellent, was not as good as it could be, particularly from an operational point of view.
“There is talk of satisfaction with the excellent partnership and how to strengthen it further. We still need to verify” that it is excellent, she told a group of journalists, including EUROPE. “We have to start by seeing if everything is going well and improve what is not”, she added.
Ms Loiseau recalled, for example, that the EU mission EUNAVFORMED Irini and the NATO mission Sea Guardian do not exchange information (see EUROPE 12649/19). Turkey, a member of the Alliance, is opposed to the exchange.
The MEP felt that the two organisations could do better from an operational point of view, explaining, for example, that an exchange of training could make sense.
Earlier in the week, a senior EU official called for more calibrated bilateral cooperation on cyber-related issues. The official also acknowledged that at the tactical level, cooperation between the two institutions was not always easy.
The EU and NATO are working on a new joint declaration on their cooperation, which is expected to be adopted in the coming months (see EUROPE 12818/6). (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)