BRUSSELS - The EU Foreign Affairs Defense Council has said that ongoing conflicts and instability in Middle East, Africa along with Ukraine, remain a particular cause for great concern of the EU member states.
“Europe’s security environment is evolving significantly, rapidly and dramatically,” according to the Conclusions on Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) adopted at the EU Foreign Affairs Defense Council meeting on Tuesday.
“Ongoing conflicts and instability in our immediate and wider neighbourhood, such as in Iraq, Libya, the Sahel, Syria and Ukraine, remain a particular cause for great concern. Together with long standing and newly emerging security challenges, these developments may have longer term effects on European security and international peace and stability. They demonstrate also the close links between internal and external security dimensions,” reads the document.
Therefore the defense ministers charged EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in close cooperation with the European Commission, to assess the impact of changes in the global environment, and to report to the Council in the course of 2015 on the challenges and opportunities arising for the Union, following consultations with the EU Member States.
Furthermore, the Council reiterated the urgent need of enabling the EU and its Member States to assume increased responsibilities to act as a security provider, at the international level and in particular in the neighbourhood.
“The Council stresses that protecting and promoting European interests and values will increasingly require the EU and its Member States combining their efforts, underpinned by the necessary means and sufficient budgetary resources,” said the document.
The conclusions contain a large list of the measures, which should be taken by the EU and its members to achieve the goals they set.
These are development of innovative and competitive European Defense Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB), sufficient expenditures related to security and defense, cooperation in military equipment production and others.
Besides, the Council welcomed the deployment of the CSDP military bridging operation in the Central African Republic in 2014, the civilian CSDP mission in Ukraine (EUAM Ukraine), which today the Council has decided to launch, and the progress made towards launching a civilian mission in Mali.
