New committed EU intervention force with Austria – politics
The EU is getting a new, tried-and-tested intervention force that should be operational by 2025. Austria is on board.
The intervention force is part of a security policy concept that the foreign and defense ministers of the 27th member states decided on Monday, according to diplomats in Brussels. Austria is also participating in the intervention force, Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner (ÖVP) in the run-up to the decision. In the first year Germany will die provide 5,000 soldiers of the troop.
New EU intervention force: Austria on board
Austria’s neutrality does not stand in the way of the rapid reaction force, says Tanner. “Of course we are there,” she announced on Monday in Brussels when asked about Austrian participation. She also referred to the participation in the battle groups that had never been used before.
Germany will provide an EU intervention force in the first year
Berlin, meanwhile, wants to provide the new EU intervention force with up to 5,000 soldiers in the first year of operation, 2025. German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said it was important to send a clear signal that we stand up for one another. The SPD politician described the planned intervention force as the “hoped-for heart” of the concept, which WILL be called the official strategic compass. Lambrecht went on to say that Germany will also fund most of the additional EU military aid to Ukraine’s military, at 26 percent.
Start EU intervention force earlier?
It would also be conceivable that the troupe started earlier than in three years. However, this is considered unlikely. The first drafts of the compass published by Germany existed long before Russia attacked Ukraine. According to diplomats, the plans have now been revised.
The version that has now been adopted makes it clearer that the EU must also deal with nuclear threats. It is also stated that the mobility of the European armed forces “urgently” needs to be improved. On the other hand, a sentence intended to enable cooperation with Moscow in selected subject areas was deleted without replacement.
“When we started work, we could not imagine that the situation would be so bad at the moment of acceptance,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. One would now have to think about the European ability to deal with challenges such as war.
What is included in the new EU intervention force?
In addition to ground troops, the new force should also include air and naval forces as required. It’s about having different “modules” that can be combined with one another, Borrell explained about the project at the end of last year. Different deployment scenarios could be, for example, intervening in an armed conflict, evacuating people or securing an airport.
There have been discussions in the EU about setting up such an intervention force for a long time. They were fueled again by the desired dependency on the USA during the evacuation mission in Afghanistan in the summer of last year.
Proposal for the establishment of a free force submitted
After that, Germany, together with other EU countries, will present a proposal for setting up an intervention force. He intended to further develop the existing EU battle groups into powerful crisis response forces that could be deployed at short notice. To this end, space and cyber capabilities as well as special forces and strategic air transport capacities are to be provided.
This idea is now incorporated into the Strategic Compass. The new force should therefore consist of substantially changed EU battle groups and other armed forces of the member states. The previous EU Battlegroup concept provides for two units, each with a core of around 1,500 soldiers, to be made available at all times, who are made available by different EU states every six months. Recently, however, there had always been problems getting several troops together. The EU forces have never been deployed.
Objective: Shaping military action in the EU context felixbler
The declared goal is also to make expected actions in the EU context more flexible and less complicated. For example, the use of Article 44 of the EU Treaty, which has never been used before, is to be abolished. Coalitions of the willing could be formed via these for a military operation.
However, Latvia’s Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics warned against resting on the laurels of the new concept. The Compass asks the EU for a toolbox to become a real geopolitical defense and security actor together with NATO. But this is only “the beginning of the journey”. A lot depends on how successful you are in supporting Ukraine against Russia.
Austria’s defense minister Tanner
Tanner had shown up to an agreement in advance. According to their assessment, the EU heads of state and government will approve it at their summit meeting at the end of the week. “We have to be faster in view of this challenging situation,” said Tanner. It is also about “speaking with one voice, being really credible, positioning ourselves more robustly. There is no question that we have some catching up to do.” Many of Austria’s suggestions were also included in the Strategic Compass, said the Minister of Defense with a view to the Western Balkans and cooperation with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
“Putin’s war of aggression on #Ukraine shows more than ever that we need a common foreign, security & #defense policy. With the security policy concept of the EU, including a new joint intervention force, we are getting a small step closer to this,” said First Vice President of the EU Parliament Othmar Karas (ÖVP). Lukas Mandl, foreign policy spokesman for the ÖVP in the EU Parliament, emphasized: “But the EU will be required to act quickly and independently before 2025. It is therefore necessary to further strengthen the PESCO projects on a daily basis, to involve the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the six Western Balkan countries, to exhaust and increase the European Defense Fund for innovation and civilian technology leadership, and to increase the defense budgets of the member states appropriately.
Gamon on agreement on adopted EU intervention force
NEOS MEP Claudia Gamon described the agreement of the EU states on a dedicated EU intervention force as an “important first step” and a “clearly recognizable will on the part of the member states to strengthen a common European foreign and security policy”. Now one would have to “create an all-encompassing common foreign, security and defense policy: This includes both an effective European foreign minister and a common EU professional army with active Austrian participation.”