Zaragosa, 22/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - At the meetings on Friday and Saturday at the Informal Defence Council, EU Defence Ministers, recognised the need to develop their defence capabilities. Before Saturday's session on European military action in Macedonia, Friday's talks focused on European military capability, NATO relations and the war on terrorism. Before their formal meeting on 14 May in Brussels, the President of the Council, Federico Trillo, announced that Ministers had prepared a draft declaration for the Seville Summit on the ESDP role in the war on terrorism, which would involve co-operation between intelligence services, co-ordination in the struggle against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, protection of European air space and the protection of military forces during humanitarian missions .
A few months before the launch of the European rapid reaction force (1 January 2003), CFSP High Representative, Javier Solana and NATO General Secretary, George Robertson, appealed for Member States to invest more in defence in order to improve it. Javier Solana pointed out that, European military spending had declined since the 1990s, reaching 2% of GDP. "We must also spend more efficiently", he added, and stressed that, "for costs that represent half of the USA defence budget, the Europeans are far from achieving half their capability". The NATO General Secretary declared on the evening before the conference in Prague that, "Too many governments in NATO were spending too little on defence and wasted a lot of what they do spend on their capabilities that do not contribute at all to their own security, the security of Europe or our collective interests." Javier Solana pointed out that, "We are at a point where Member States must take decisions on technical solutions for filling the gaps". He indicated that strategic mobility, communications and information systems were the priorities. Lord Robertson pointed out that in order to response to current crises, they needed better national defence, better intelligence, more easily deployed police forces and more effective control of money laundering. He indicated that there were fields in which savings could be made, with less use for unusable conscripts, heavy small arms or permanent Headquarters.
Federico Trillo pointed out in an interview in the "El Periodico de Aragon" that they had a list of military capability, military high command and everything to do with military command, planning and communication structures to avoid NATO capacity being unnecessarily repeated. Mr Trillo added that that the efficiency of European defence policy depended on this agreement. He also pointed out that the following Presidencies would be performed by Denmark, which was not a member of ESDP, then Greece, which is blocking the conclusion of an agreement with NATO on the basis of a definitive compromise with Turkey. The Spanish MP hoped that the atmosphere at Zaragosa would allow a solution to be quickly found. Technical discussion were being held with in Greece in Madrid in parallel to the meeting in Zaragosa.