The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said on Tuesday 5 April that there should be better coordination of Member States’ defence spending.
“We need to have the programmatic capacity to say how everyone should behave so that we can achieve a global optimum. It should not be the sum of local optima and that is the difficulty of the exercise”, he explained during a question and answer session held in the European Parliament.
Mr Borrell explained that overlaps and gaps should be avoided.
At the end of May – for the time being, the date that has been chosen is 25 May – the European Commission and the European Defence Agency (EDA) are due to present an analysis of the weaknesses of Member States in terms of defence, with the aim of making the differences converge.
“It would be interesting to have a number of guidelines for the optimal coordination of defence spending”, Borrell insisted.
“We have very little time to act and establish the development plans that each country will have to follow so that the coordination plan can result in the better use of resources”, he warned.
When asked by Tom Vanderkendelaere (EPP, Belgium) about the proposals that the European Commission and the EDA might make, the High Representative explained that they should not be “completely innovative”. He said that the latest Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) gave some indications. The new CARD is expected in the coming months.
Borrell cited several areas where Member States are facing shortcomings, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, air-to-air refuelling aircraft, or portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. “There is much to be done in these areas”, he said.
Asked by several MEPs about cooperation between the EU and NATO, Borrell acknowledged that an agreement still hadn’t been reached over the new joint declaration between the two organisations that could be adopted at the NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June. “The devil is in the details: when drafting the joint statement, we found details that require us to refine our positions”, he explained. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)