MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th November, 2020) The European Union should not lose an opportunity to enhance defense cooperation in the coming years, even when projected President-elect Joe Biden comes to power in the United States, Jiri Sedivy, the chief executive of the European Defence Agency (EDA), told Euractiv.
The interview comes after the bloc presented its first Coordinated Annual Review on Defence, which outlines avenues for closer defense cooperation between all member states, except Denmark, which does not participate in EDA. The report raises issues like fragmentation and duplication of European defense and insufficient operational engagement.
According to Sedivy, Europe has "a really deteriorating strategic environment around us in our neighbourhood."
"We have a lot of pressure from the strategic environment, we have immediate experience from COVID-19, which also teaches us to cooperate more, we see the US not leaving Europe ... If we miss the opportunity in this period, it means the next two years, if we miss the opportunity to use all these instruments, then it will be perhaps in the future by historians as EU actually missing the rendezvous with history," he said.
According to the EDA chief, even with a Democratic president in the White House, the EU will still have to strive to become more self-sufficient.
"Even under the new US administration, which will still be focusing more and more inevitably towards the Asia-Pacific region, it will be expected from us to be more autonomous, be stronger, and therefore more credible in NATO," he stated.
The EU has been seeking to expand its autonomous defense capabilities beyond NATO's auspices in recent years. In 2018, Brussels established the EU Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) in order to enhance EU military and defense cooperation.
