Bold steps in multinational cooperation: taking European defence forward

There is a defence crisis in Europe. And the only way to tackle it is by deepening European defence cooperation across the board. Sovereignty is no longer an excuse for abstaining from participation in ‘pooling and sharing’. These are some of the main conclusions in this Clingendael Report, written by authors and Clingendael researchers Margriet Drent, Kees Homan and Dick Zandee.

Ongoing European Defence crisis
The title of this report reflects an aspiration: ‘Bold steps in multinational cooperation: Taking European defence forward’. The Clingendael researchers argue that the on-going defence crisis in Europe is caused by the multiple challenges of budget austerity on the one hand and increased instability just across our borders and a United States that is looking to Europe to be the first to deal with it, on the other.

Closer cooperation among the Member States of the EU and NATO on defence is crucial to close the gap between the challenges to our security and the means available. The Clingendael report describes the wider context and ways of closing the existing gap through the clustering of defence capabilities in Europe. The authors further formulate a whole range of recommendations to make sure that the relevant military capabilities become and remain available to meet our collective security needs.

Seminar
This report is based on an international seminar which was held January 2013 in cooperation with The Netherlands Ministry of Defence. During this event participants from seven partner countries of the Netherlands and representatives of the European Defence Agency, NATO and think tanks identified concrete cooperation opportunities and generated innovative thinking on how to move forward on defence cooperation in Europe. Both the EU-NATO context and the bilateral or regional cooperation prospects were taken into account  to explore new opportunities for defence cooperation and to look into innovative solutions.

Photo: Dutch minister of Defence Jeanine Hennis and her colleagues Pieter de Crem (Belgium) and Jean-Marie Halsdorf (Luxemburg) sign an agreement on military cooperation