Rethymnon, 07/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - "The work of the panels is progressing, but it's a gradual process", declared a Community source questioned by EUROPE, on the fringe of the informal EU Defence Council on Crete, on these groups responsible for finding solutions to the EU's shortcomings regarding military capabilities. For six months now, 17 panels have been examining 24 of the EU's significant shortcoming among the 42 shortcomings identified. The results are expected for March 2003 in view of the Ministerial Conference on the EU's military capabilities scheduled for May. "It will take us at least two months to put together all these results stemming from the different groups, each working in its own way and at its own speed", the source explained.
These panels have as goal to propose short- and long-term solutions, the first enabling the EU to temporarily hedge against these shortcomings while waiting to have the means to put in place long-term solutions. Example: battalions of attack helicopters. "Currently, we are one battalion short. The long-term solution is to encourage Member states to procure more. In the short-term, we are looking at ways of co-ordinating training and command of small helicopter units from different Member states to manage to get them to work together," the same source explained, noting that one battalion of 60 helicopters did not work like six units of ten helicopters. Another example: in-flight refuelling. In the long term, the solution is to procure the future large European transport aircraft, the A400M, a project that is running up against serious difficulties, notably of a budgetary nature. Meanwhile, "we can convert DC10s to in-flight refuelling by installing special kits". Long term solutions often run up against problems of cost; that is the case notably for the procurement and launch of strategic research programmes (intelligence, infrared satellites, communication interception satellites, radar). "It is an economic problem that has political implications", the same source points out, stipulating that "in Iraq, for example, European troops depended on American radars to follow troop movement".