Weimar Stresses Restructuring Of European Defense

The Weimar group of Poland, France and Germany is pushing for action to restructure Europe's Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) and wants concrete results in a range of areas under the Polish presidency of the EU in the second half of 2011. In a December letter delivered to the Catherine Ashton, EU's High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and head of the European Defence Agency, the foreign affairs and defense ministers of the three countries say that "restructuring European DTIB remains a strategic and economic necessity, together with stimulating research investments." They add that "particularly in this field, we see a potentially substantial role for the EDA as well, under your leadership" and ask her to provide a report on progress in this field "in due time."

With the EU's efforts to come up with major concrete military capability projects apparently faltering, given that nothing major was forthcoming at the recent EU defense ministers' meeting in December, the group of three call on Ashton to give fresh impetus to European Security and Defence Policy "in full complementarity with NATO."
"We need to make continued progress in concrete projects and initiatives, whether in a bilateral or collective framework, by strengthening cooperation within the EU and between the EU and NATO on military capability development issues and seeking new methods for developing and optimizing our capabilities (e.g. pooling of efforts, specialization)," they write.
Back in November, France and the UK reached an agreement on a range of security and defense areas. Many observers in Brussels saw this as sounding the death knell for European cooperation. The fact that France has signed the letter suggests that France is still committed to European cooperation on defense although how that will play out in practice is an open question.
The three countries also call for more cooperation between the EDA and NATO's Allied Command Transformation and suggests that EU-NATO dialogue could also focus on new challenges such as cyberdefence.
With regard to the EU's battle groups, which have yet to be deployed, German, France and Poland say that they will consider the creation of modules accommodating comprehensive military and civilian capabilities. The three countries will together form a battle group in the first half of 2013. The three also want to work with Ashton on proposals, including on common funding, "to increase the readiness, deployability and cost efficiency of the battle groups (e.g. strategic lift)."