Spain’s Minister of Defence, Carme Chacón, will be attending the Informal Meeting of Ministers to be held in Majorca on 24 and 25 February, hoping to drive forward plans to put Treaty of Lisbon instruments into practice that will make it possible to create a European defence force that can react quickly and effectively to humanitarian crises, as well as ensuring a strong and innovative security and defence industry.

Spain will also propose taking on a mission to set up a security force in Somalia “that will be able to give the Somali Government the authority that right now it lacks”.

1. What are the key objectives of the Spanish Presidency in the area of Defence?
We want to see a Europe that is stronger, safer, and better able to make a joint defence commitment, not only to defend its member states, but to make the world a safer and fairer place. This is the path we are starting out on, and the Treaty of Lisbon and the new instruments it offers in the area of security and defence will help us in this journey. We also want innovation and equality to be the strong points of our Presidency. This means we want the same level of security and defence for all the citizens of the EU and, if possible, to export this to the whole world. We also realise that we will only have a strong Europe if we have a strong European defence and security industry too. So that is basically what our work will focus on: developing the Treaty of Lisbon instruments to help us build a Europe that has greater capacity, is better coordinated and stronger on the issues that affect us all as citizens.

2. What initiatives in particular are you planning to present at the informal meeting in Majorca?
We want to strengthen the institutional side, so that the EU’s Ministers of Defence have greater ability to agree on the issue we are working towards, which is a stronger, safer Europe, and progress towards a European armed force; step by step, but that is our objective. The catastrophe caused by the earthquake in Haiti has shown us that Europe must have mechanisms for responding to humanitarian crises more effectively and quickly, and that is why we want to propose that the instruments we currently have – the Tactical Battle Groups – should be able to operate as a compact, strong and rapid reaction force to deal with these kinds of humanitarian crises or other requirements that the EU may have. However, we also want to improve the instruments and mechanisms of the European Defence Agency, in the knowledge that we will only have a strong and able Europe if this is accompanied by a strong European defence industry. Spain has spent a great deal of time working on this, and now we want to take advantage of the Presidency to share this desire, will and work with our partners.

3. The Presidency is going to promote Permanent Structured Cooperation. What is this?
This stems from the Treaty of Lisbon, and Spain is putting it into action because it came into being at the same time as the Presidency and gives us the possibility of working together; whereby EU member states that take on a set of more advanced criteria and commitments will have greater capacity than the other countries to carry out joint operations. We want to open up discussion about defining what the criteria should be for certain countries’ decisions on whether to become part of this enhanced cooperation; and to come up with a common denominator about what form the Permanent Structured Cooperation should take, what the scope of its activities should be, and which countries are able to take on greater commitments in the name of the EU.

4. Changes will also be proposed to Operation Atalanta.
We are aware that Operation Atalanta has already been a success. We have reduced the number of attacks resulting in kidnapping by 50%, but we know we can do better and we must do better in order to put an effective end to piracy. We want to give the commander of Operation Atalanta another function, to home in on ports and places where we know that most of the mother ships are setting out from and where the kidnappers take boats they have seized in order to negotiate. Europe has always believed that there will never be a strictly military solution to any of these problems. We realise that there must be both civil and military solutions. For this reason, we want to see improved synergies between the civil and military spheres and we also want to improve these still further in an environment such as Somalia, which combines both sea and land. Spain has taken on an important responsibility in offering to act as the coordinating country for Europe in developing a security force in Somalia that will be able to give the Somalian Government an authority that right now it is lacking. And we are planning the outline and operational details of this land-based mission, in the knowledge that the military operation we are carrying out at sea is the consequence of a problem on shore, the absence of a State and authority in Somalia.

5. Five Maghreb countries are also attending the Majorca meeting. What is the purpose of this?
Spain is very clear on the fact that the Mediterranean is a sea of opportunities, but if we let our guard down then it can become a sea of problems – and we share this vision with all the associations we are involved in. At the moment it is a sea of peace and tranquillity, but both North and South must work together to tackle the dangers and new threats of the 21st Century, such as international terrorism, drug smuggling and organised crime. We must put our surveillance and maritime safety capacities into action in order to combat these threats, which could become an area of concern or a problem if we do not deal with them properly. And Spain will not forget this. In terms of the initiative of bringing together the countries of Europe and the Maghreb, we would like it to be not just the Spanish Presidency that sees to hold these meetings, but for the EU to be able to sit down regularly with these countries to discuss issues relating to the Mediterranean Sea, which must carry on being a source of opportunities rather than one of concern.

Source: Spanish Presidency Of the European Union

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