Green light from the Council of Foreign and Defense Ministers of the 27 countriesEuropean Union to the new mechanism defense together. The decision was made this afternoon after the meeting in Brussels.
According to the heads of EU government diplomacy, this is a historic turning point. The new plan will, as a first practical consequence, establish a military power of at least 5,000 soldiers. A special unit designated by the municipal offices to intervene in exceptional cases that require the presence of an emergency unit.
A context once again set by Brussels is comparable to the evacuation of Kabul airport last August, when the Taliban regained power and unleashed a flow of refugees that could seriously complicate military logistics at the time in the Afghan capital.
The new European force is expected to come into force by 2025. The decision, which arrived in the Belgian capital today, was long overdue and not only related to the war in Ukraine. Even if, as indicated by EU defense leaders, the current conflict has given a strong boost to the final green light.
“This is not the answer to the war in Ukraine, but it is part of the answer,” said the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Joseph Borrell When we started work, we could not imagine that the situation would be so serious at the last moment of approval and that Europe would have to face such a big challenge.
“The EU is not sufficiently equipped to face the current threats and challenges,” reads the preamble of the document, adopted today by the EU27. The measure is officially called “Strategic compass‘, a natural progression of the socalled ‘tactical groups’ formed in 2007 to form this reaction force of 5,000 soldiers.
As a result of today’s approval of the European Strategic Compass, EU countries have committed themselves to increasing military spending from the current 1.5% and then better coordinating the various policies of individual governments.
“The strength of the 5,000 soldiers will have land, air and sea components states the final approved document and will be equipped with means of transport to be able to carry out rescue and evacuation operations of European citizens trapped in conflict”. The common compass was one of the goals that Emmanuel Macron set himself at the beginning of the semester of the EU Council Presidency. A goal whose achievement was inevitably driven by events in Ukraine.