NATO and EU Senior Military Officials deepen military EU-NATO cooperation
On 19 June 2018, Lieutenant General Jan Broeks, Director General of the NATO International Military Staff (DGIMS) hosted Lieutenant General Esa Pulkkinen, Director General of the European Union Military Staff (DGEUMS) for the bi-annual IMS-EUMS Director Generals’ Conference at the new NATO Headquarters in Brussels.
The IMS-EUMS Director Generals’ (DGs’) Conference is a biannual forum enabling deeper cooperation between EU and NATO military staffs. Lieutenant General Broeks opened this iteration by stating that “this conference event is not only important to guide both our staffs, it is part of a larger effort to increase the overall NATO-EU cooperation, which is one of the five lines of effort for the upcoming NATO summit.”. Lieutenant General Pulkkinen, while sharing DGIMS' considerations, underlined how the implementation process of the EU-NATO Joint Declaration has become a major focus of both Organisations.
Discussions centred on various topics, most of them related to the agreed set of proposals of the Joint Declaration, with special emphasis on EU-NATO cooperation in the domains of military mobility, hybrid, information exchange, logistics and cyber defence, exercises, and training & education.
Since 2013, the DGs’ Conference has been held twice a year with the participation of the Directors of all EUMS Directorates and IMS Divisions. It is organised in turn at the premises of the EU or NATO.