The Russian invasion of Ukraine and its consequences for the EU have made their way into the new draft ‘Strategic Compass’, dated 5 March and obtained by EUROPE (see EUROPE 12899/16).
While the ‘Strategic Compass’ is intended to present “a common strategic vision of the EU’s security and defence policy for the next 5 to 10 years”, the new draft repeatedly emphasises Russia’s ongoing military aggression in Ukraine.
The document looks at the aggression, but also at Russia’s influence on certain countries in the world - including via the Wagner Group - and its role in disinformation. Faced with this situation, the project reaffirms the EU’s unity, its will to act, its determination to defend the European security order and peacemaking or highlights the objective of the European Peace Facility.
“In this highly confrontational system, the EU and its Member States must invest more in their security and defence to be a stronger political and security actor”, the new draft stresses, emphasising defence spending, unlike previous versions.
“It becomes urgent to spend more and better”, the project states. “We will therefore substantially increase our spending on defence”, the member states pledge, committing themselves to setting targets for increased and improved defence spending by mid-2022 “to meet (security) needs, maximise results, increase interoperability and make full use of economies of scale”.
The new project also goes deeper into military mobility. Member States commit to making further commitments by the end of 2022 to substantially enhance and invest in military mobility, promising to agree on an ambitious and revised action plan. Member States also commit to “immediately” accelerating the implementation of dual-use transport infrastructure projects and to launching, by the end of the year, an analysis of the capacity of the EU’s transport infrastructure to support large-scale movements at short notice. Finally, Member States promise to complete the improvement and harmonisation of cross-border procedures by 2025.
Furthermore, the Member States decide that the Threat Analysis will be revisited regularly “at least every three years, or sooner if the changing strategic and security context calls for it”, starting in 2022 and not 2023 as in the initial versions.
See the project: https://aeur.eu/f/mj (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)