Military cooperation with partners

As the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its satellite countries saw their structures dissolve, NATO offered a “hand of friendship” to encourage cooperation with the Alliance. This expression, coined at the London Summit in 1990, came to symbolise NATO’s partnership activities in the early 1990s and, in particular, the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme created in 1994. The PfP Programme allows partners to engage in an individual relationship with NATO, choosing their own priorities for cooperation.

In parallel, the Partnership Coordination Cells was also set up at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium, in 1994.

It principally enabled partner representatives to work with NATO at making their military structures in the areas of peacekeeping, humanitarian, and search and rescue operations interoperable with those of NATO. It has since been succeeded by the Military Cooperation Division at SHAPE.

The following video shows the opening of the Partnership Coordination Cell, a highly symbolic occasion for SHAPE