The Head of the Security and Defence Division of the European External Action Service, Stijn Mols, said on Tuesday 29 November that military mobility was “one of the success stories of European defence”.
“The strengthening of military mobility is more important than ever with the return of war”, he stressed at a hearing of the European Parliament’s Security and Defence Subcommittee.
“We have seen a lot of progress, but there are bottlenecks and more structured solutions are needed”, Mols said, citing gauge differences, cyberspace and hybrid threats, and the surge in civilian transport demands.
Beyond infrastructure, Dutch General Henny Bouman, who is in charge of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) project on military mobility, highlighted the administrative challenge.
“The Member States all agreed to reach an agreement on transboundary movements within 5 days. This remains a challenge in many Member States”, he explained, adding that the countries participating in the project had already signed two technical agreements that should simplify and harmonise procedures.
According to François Arbault, Director for Defence Industry at the European Commission’s DG DEFIS, a financial agreement will be signed in the next few days with a consortium of companies from 9 Member States and Norway, with a budget of €9 million. The aim is to have a digital system available by mid-2025, which would allow the acceleration of military mobility.
Both Mr Mols and Mr Arbault focussed on resilience. For Mr Arbault, “more than ever, it is the top priority, at the heart of military mobility. There is a need for shorter response times and for resilient, sustainable and responsive transport infrastructures”.
The two men also called for additional funding for military mobility. “The need for an improvement in infrastructure will be greater than the mobility budget available”, Mols stressed, calling for a strengthening of the budget in the framework of Connecting Europe and the mid-term review of the multi-annual budget. €295.2 billion, with which to improve civil and military mobility, is planned for 2023.
For his part, General Bouman highlighted that the final objective of military mobility consisted of multimodal corridors, customs adjustment, rapid authorisations and the free movement of dangerous military goods. “To achieve these objectives, we have set ourselves milestones, three phases: awareness, alignment and then optimisation. We are still in the first phase, but at the end of it”, he explained. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)