EU’s flagship defence cooperation PESCO struggles to show life

EU defence ministers will on May 23 review and update the list of defence projects launched under the ambitious PESCO umbrella, amid concerns that most projects will never make it over the line.

EU member states first launched the bloc’s so-called Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) five years ago, in a push to strengthen defence and industrial collaboration among themselves.

As time went by, more and more defence projects were added to the list.

What started out as a list of 17 projects, will comprise a total of 68 projects after ministers agree on the new package, the fifth “wave” of eleven projects, which ministers are set to approve next Tuesday, EURACTIV has learned.

They will also, for the second time, call off some projects due to a lack of progress since their start, two EU diplomats and officials told EURACTIV as EU defence ministers met in Brussels to assess the bloc’s capabilities next week.

Three are in particular on the ministers’ radar: the Indirect Fire Support (Euro Artillery), led by Slovakia, to develop a mobile precision artillery platform; the EU Test and Evaluation Centres (EUTEC), led by France and Sweden and aiming to improve European test capacities and capabilities; and the Cobasing for member states’ sharing of bases and support points around the world, led by France.

The Council’s recommendation, adopted by the 27 member states, stated last November that “where project members identify that projects cannot provide the expected outputs, such projects should be revitalised or closed, in order to ensure the relevance, effectiveness, and credibility of all PESCO projects”.

EU member states had notably also previously closed the European Union Training Mission Competence Centre (EU TMCC) project led by Germany. First approved in the 2018 wave, it aimed to train the personnel working in EU training missions around the world.

Work on its development, however, showed that functioning processes already exist and recommendations for better coordination between the member states were made.

Absence of results

More than just three projects, however, are currently moving slowly, if at all, as EU sources underlined. To be more efficient, member states may need to close some more and focus efforts, one EU diplomat said.

The Council had also said that “nearly half of the projects are expected to deliver concrete results by 2025,” the deadline the member states set to assess progress, meaning more than half of the ongoing 60 projects are at a standstill with nothing to show.

Member states “should undertake enhanced efforts to deliver tangible results as planned, especially for those projects officially established in 2018 that have not yet rendered any concrete deliverables,” the Council had recommended.

Nevertheless, PESCO has had some success, visible in projects related to cyber security and military mobility, in which the latter aims to improve the movement of troops and equipment on the European continent.

Earlier this month, Switzerland‘s defence ministry told EURACTIV it is considering potentially joining one cyber defence project and military mobility as well, and thus potentially be an addition to several non-EU countries interested or already participating.

Difficult barriers

The European Defence Agency’s (EDA) so-called Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) report warned last November that “defence planning continues to be done mostly in isolation, and (…) member states remain unconvinced by European cooperation projects”.

“Collaboration remains the exception rather than the rule, making the agreed targets elusive goals to be achieved at some point in the future,” the November CARD report said.

The Council recommendation dated last November also noted that the member states participating in PESCO “have demonstrated little progress regarding the commitment to increase the number of collaborative defence capability projects and related investment in defence equipment procurement and defence research and technology”.

The member states’ objective in creating PESCO was to help reach their commitment to allocate 35% of defence spending to collaborative projects, which currently stands at 18%.