Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Ashton and Paloméros: why the EU and NATO need partners
High Representative, you say that a change of mind-set is needed
from national to international.
How feasible is that and what role can your offices play?
When you look at the resources available across the EU,
200 billion euros are spent on defence,
we need to do better with Euro resources.
We know that budgets are difficult,
that the challenges that we all face are changing,
that we need to address those and be ready for new challenges.
And take all of that and create the political will
to collaborate more effectively
to make sure that industry is better coordinated,
we need to use the resources we have to best effect.
The challenges are huge for all of us
and we are working to make the best out of the resources.
And that's why really we must work even better together
and look what are the opportunities of today.
Obviously, within NATO, with the 28 members
and certainly in the Allied Command Transformation,
we are focussing more and more
on cost-effectiveness, quality, relevance...
And those are key for the future. So, I see us in NATO
interacting more and more frequently and in depth with the nations
to make sure we are on the same line.
As we've seen, there are members of NATO and the EU
who are in severe economic difficulties.
There are other countries who are better placed to assist.
Do we need to look more at partners outside these organisations?
Whenever we do a mission, we have a number of countries
that we talk to to contribute and collaborate with.
That's been true off the Horn of Africa, when dealing with piracy.
It's true in the missions that we prepared, both civilian and military.
And we'll continue to do that because it's right to work with our partners.
However, it's not a substitute for what we need to do as well.
And as I said, we need to be much more effective
and really look for those synergies, for those economies of scale
between countries and organisations.
In the new world you need allies,
within NATO and outside NATO as well.
We saw that in Afghanistan,
many partners contributing to the mission, and in Libya as well.
So, it's very attractive for many countries to be able to cooperate
and integrate with NATO forces when needed.
You've talked about Smart Defence and pulling in and sharing at the EDA.
That's within organisations,
how much potential is there for more cooperation?
We do a lot. Secretary-General Rasmussen and I
spent a lot of time working out how best to collaborate
between NATO and the European Union. We do different things.
We need to make sure that we are complementary in theatre
and in our planning and our thinking,
that we offer to the members of NATO and the European Union
the opportunities from our research capability,
from the capacity we have to tackle specific problems.
Air-to-air refuelling is an area where we're doing that
in the European Defence Agency, but in dialogue with NATO.
All of this we do well. Of course, we can do better.