NATO and the EU sign agreement to support good governance
NATO and the European Union signed an agreement on Monday 10 December to cooperate in promoting good governance in the defence and security sector. As part of this agreement, the European Union will contribute 2 million EUR to the NATO Building Integrity (BI) Trust Fund for 2019-2022.
The agreement was signed by the NATO Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy, Ambassador Alejandro Alvargonzález, and the European Commission’s Deputy Director-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations, Mr. Maciej Popowski. In signing the agreement, Ambassador Alvargonzález highlighted the importance of NATO-EU cooperation and underlined the commitment of both organisations to strengthening good governance. "Building Integrity has proven to be an effective partnership tool to support nations to embed the principles of transparency, accountability and integrity in the defence and related security sector", he said. With this contribution to the NATO Building Integrity Programme, Mr. Maciej Popowski said “the European Union is delivering on the EU-NATO Warsaw Declaration of 2016 commitments by continuing our support to partner countries in the European eastern and southern Neighbourhood on good governance and security matters.”
The resources of the Building Integrity Trust Fund will support capacity building activities to strengthen transparency, accountability and integrity in Ministries of Defence and related security sector. NATO's Building Integrity programme provides peer-to-peer consultations , education and training and access to a pool of subject matter experts drawn from international organisations, national administrations, private sector as well as civil society.
The Building Integrity programme of activities , originally launched in 2007, is open to NATO member and partner states.
Contributions by the European Union to the NATO Building Integrity Trust Fund will be used to scale up the ongoing programme of activities made available to 71 nations world-wide. Tailored packages are currently being implemented in 20 nations.
Through the NATO Building Integrity programme, nations are able to take part in education and training for civilian and military personnel and share lessons learned and promote good practices. In 2018, 2552 civilian and military personnel took part in Building Integrity capacity building activities conducted in Europe, Africa, Middle East, Latin America and Asia.