European Union Defence Ministers today welcomed a report from the European Defence Agency, designed to serve as a compass for defence planners as they develop the military capabilities the European Security and Defence Policy will require over the next twenty years in an increasingly challenging environment.
The report – the product of 11 months of study involving officials and experts from governments, defence bodies, academia and industry across Europe – was debated by the EDA Steering Board, the decision-making body on which the Defence Ministers of the Agency’s 24 participating Member States, and the European Commission, sit.
“This fascinating document offers planners, working their way through the fog of the future, a shared and stimulating analysis of some of the major trends that will shape that future,” said Javier Solana, the Head of the Agency, who chaired the ministerial meeting. “It provides shared views on the state of the world in which European Security and Defence Policy operations will take place and on what kind of capabilities will be needed to conduct those operations successfully,” he added.
“Given the lead times typically involved in developing defence capability, decisions we take, or fail to take, today will affect whether we have the right military capabilities, and the right capacities in Europe’s defence technological and industrial base, in the third decade of this century,” Solana said.
The report paints a sobering picture of an older and relatively less prosperous Europe in 20 years’ time which will be living in a less stable world. Defence will need to adapt to accelerating technological challenges and to changing attitudes towards the use of force, placing greater emphasis on the careful and precise use of military power.
It says ESDP operations are likely to be expeditionary, multinational and multi-instrument. Information will be critical against opponents whose tactics, aims and values will often be radically different. In such circumstances, the military will be only one of a range of instruments applied to achieve campaign goals. Complementarity of civil and military effort will determine success.
While the Steering Board endorsement does not include agreement of all particulars, the Ministers agreed that the Long-Term Vision (LTV) should be the basis for the Agency to present new proposals on an ESDP Capability Development Plan. “The best way to prepare for this future is through greater mutual transparency about medium- to long-term defence planning, so we can identify all those areas where the pooling of efforts and resources promises better value for money from tight defence budgets,” Solana said.
The LTV should also be the basis to pursue work on a European Defence R&T Strategy and related priorities, and to set an appropriate agenda for strengthening the European defence technological and industrial base.
Ministers also took stock of plans for a Joint Investment Programme (JIP) on Force Protection, an innovative approach to meeting one of the key objectives outlined by EU leaders of spending more, and more together in the critical area of Defence R&T. They urged the Agency to finalise the plan for decision at the next Steering Board meeting on 13 November and expressed their hopes for a programme with wide participation and a substantial budget.
The ministers also discussed the Agency’s priorities under a financial framework for the next three years which will be fixed by the Council of Ministers in November. The framework envisages the possibility of a modest increase in the size and budget of the Agency, with significant joint investments by Member States in the future taking place through mechanisms such as the JIP.
“It is clear that the future context for European defence is very challenging. It will be more expensive to recruit and equip our armed forces. And they will have to be flexible enough to handle complex and sensitive operations,” EDA Chief Executive Nick Witney said.
“But the shared analysis of the future set out in the Long-Term Vision provides a solid foundation on which to build the work of the Agency. And progress on the Joint Investment Programme is encouraging evidence that Member States are ready to work more closely together, as the best hope of preparing successfully for what lies ahead,” he added.