Bilaterale ontmoetingen EU-defensieministers in Wroclaw

These are just some of the topics of bilateral meetings, which on Thursday, September 22, opened the Informal Meeting of Defence Ministers of European Union Member States in Wroclaw.

On Thursday, Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak participated in two bilateral meetings. The Minister, accompanied by Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of National Defence, Zbigniew Wlosowicz, met with Minister of Defence and Veterans of the French Republic, Gérard Longuet, and with the Minister of Defence of the Kingdom of Sweden, Sten Tolgfors.

During the meeting of Minister Siemoniak with Gérard Longuet, the pooling and sharing initiative, bilateral cooperation and the Weimar Initiative were discussed. In this last area, the ministers discussed the possibility of increasing the EU’s capability to plan and conduct operations at strategic, operational and tactical levels, improving relations between the European Union and NATO, and strengthening multinational defence cooperation. The heads of the Polish and French defence ministry also raised the topic of Polish preparations to create a Military Police Centre of Excellence. The ministers gave a positive assessment to the existing, bilateral military cooperation (including the cooperation of special forces as well as military police), but as Minister Siemoniak stressed, Poland is interested in extending this into new areas.

European Union cooperation with Eastern Partners in the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) was one of the topics of the meeting with the Swedish Defence Minister Sten Tolgfors. As Minister Siemoniak emphasised, the goal of the Polish Presidency is to initiate a debate in the European Union on possible areas of cooperation with Eastern neighbours. The head of the Polish Defence Ministry thanked Sweden for its active participation in the conference on the EU's cooperation with Eastern Partners, held in Warsaw on September 6. Thursday's discussion also concerned the Pooling and Sharing initiative, namely the combining and sharing capabilities. The initiative aims to intensify cooperation through the launch of new multinational programmes. Poland shares the opinion that common European projects are an opportunity to reduce the costs of developing military capabilities needed for Europe, which is particularly important in light of the current financial crisis and restrictions on defence budgets that have been introduced by many EU Member States. The ministers also discussed the subject of bilateral military cooperation.

‘It was a good opportunity to review bilateral cooperation,’ concluded Minister Siemoniak. ‘The meetings had a strong context of the Wroclaw meeting - France is our main partner in the Weimar Initiative, and this is one of the main topics discussed here. The Swedes, however, during their Presidency brought about the pooling and sharing initiative,’ explained Minister Siemoniak.

Still planned for Thursday is a performance by the Polish Army Representative Artistic Group at the Wroclaw Opera House, and a working dinner, during which issues connected with CSDP operations in Libya, and the involvement of European forces in operations in Somalia and Bosnia and Herzegovina will be discussed.

The Informal Meeting of Defence Ministers of European Union Member States in Wroclaw will last until Friday, September 23. On the second day there will be two working sessions devoted to issues including the military capabilities of the European Union and EU partnerships with other countries.