EU foreign and defense ministers approve the EU’s first defense concept, the EU’s Strategic Compass. It has been under development for two years and involves the creation of its own rapid reaction force of up to 5,000 people, diplomatic sources in Brussels said.
“The strategic compass has been approved,” he said. The final adoption of the concept will take place at the EU summit on March 24-25. The strategic compass has nothing to do with the situation in Ukraine, it has been under development since 2020, but the Russian military operation has a great impact on the final stage of the discussion.
“As a foreign policy source said earlier, many in the EU called the crisis in Ukraine a “tectonic shift in European politics.” “We see that in almost all EU countries, important decisions are being made to increase military budgets and strengthen the role of defense policy,” he said.
The diplomat recalled that when EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borel began drafting the concept in early 2020, “he said Europe was in danger. “And now we see that Europe is in even greater danger than we thought a few months ago,” he said.
It should be understood that this document is not directly related to the Ukrainian crisis, but is aimed at the next 5-10 years, “said the source. He said that the crisis in Ukraine is the most serious in decades, but threats to European security exist not only in Europe , but also beyond, including in the Sahel and the Pacific, they also need to be addressed.
“We have included in this concept the decisions taken at the EU summit in Versailles (March 10-11 – ed.) That we have to spend more and better on defense,” the diplomat added. He stressed the need to significantly expand the ability to move weapons and equipment across European territory. An example was the logistics center in Poland for the supply of weapons to Ukraine.
The EU’s Strategic Compass aims to strengthen the EU’s ability to conduct military operations on its own without US and NATO support. At the same time, the authors of the document emphasize that the EU’s defense concept should complement NATO, not compete with it. The document focuses on the development of cooperation between EU countries in the development, production and procurement of new weapons and military equipment.
In the first year, Germany will provide 5,000 soldiers for these forces, the Austrian newspaper Der Standart reported.