Ashton y Paloméros: por qué la UE y la OTAN necesitan socios

Ashton and Paloméros:

why the EU and NATO need partners

High Representative, you say

that a change of mind-set is needed

from national to international.

How feasible is that

and what role can your offices play?

When you look at the resources

available across the EU,

200 billion euros

are spent on defence,

we need to do better

with Euro resources.

We know that budgets are difficult,

that the challenges

that we all face are changing,

that we need to address those

and be ready for new challenges.

And take all of that

and create the political will

to collaborate more effectively

to make sure

that industry is better coordinated,

we need to use the resources

we have to best effect.

The challenges are huge for all of us

and we are working to make

the best out of the resources.

And that’s why really

we must work even better together

and look what are

the opportunities of today.

Obviously, within NATO,

with the 28 members

and certainly in the Allied

Command Transformation,

we are focussing more and more

on cost-effectiveness,

quality, relevance...

And those are key for the future.

So, I see us in NATO

interacting more and more frequently

and in depth with the nations

to make sure

we are on the same line.

As we’ve seen, there are

members of NATO and the EU

who are

in severe economic difficulties.

There are other countries

who are better placed to assist.

Do we need to look more at partners

outside these organisations?

Whenever we do a mission,

we have a number of countries

that we talk to

to contribute and collaborate with.

That’s been true off the Horn of Africa,

when dealing with piracy.

It’s true in the missions that we

prepared, both civilian and military.

And we’ll continue to do that because

it’s right to work with our partners.

However, it’s not a substitute

for what we need to do as well.

And as I said, we need

to be much more effective

and really look for those synergies,

for those economies of scale

between countries

and organisations.

In the new world you need allies,

within NATO

and outside NATO as well.

We saw that in Afghanistan,

many partners contributing

to the mission, and in Libya as well.

So, it’s very attractive for many

countries to be able to cooperate

and integrate

with NATO forces when needed.

You’ve talked about Smart Defence

and pulling in and sharing at the EDA.

That’s within organisations,

how much potential is there

for more cooperation?

We do a lot.

Secretary-General Rasmussen and I

spent a lot of time working out

how best to collaborate

between NATO and the European

Union. We do different things.

We need to make sure that we are

complementary in theatre

and in our planning and our thinking,

that we offer to the members

of NATO and the European Union

the opportunities

from our research capability,

from the capacity we have

to tackle specific problems.

Air-to-air refuelling

is an area where we’re doing that

in the European Defence Agency,

but in dialogue with NATO.

All of this we do well.

Of course, we can do better.