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Poland wants to boost European defense


(B2) How to strengthen the Europe of defence? For once the concern is not only French... but Polish.

It was last Sunday (July 19) in a small village in northwest Poland, near Bydgoszcz, during an "informal" meeting between the Polish and French foreign ministers, Radoslaw Sikorski and Bernard Kouchner. A small conversation, during a dinner held in the personal residence of the Polish minister, a small manor in Chobielin (see photo), which made it possible to go around the subjects in anticipation in particular of the next Polish presidency of the EU ( in 2011).

The Polish minister thus gave his French counterpart an informal document (a 'non paper', in diplomatic terms) presenting its proposals to strengthen the EU's defense policy. A dozen ideas ranging from the creation of new military units to infrastructure and industrial projects.

We know that the Poles are quite in favor of permanent military units, of rapid reaction, under European command. The Kaczynski brothers (one leader of the opposition party, the PiS, the other President of the Republic), despite being classified as Eurosceptics, have spoken out on several occasions in favor of a European army, under European command (see : The President of the PIS for a strong EU army and President!). And Marcin Terlikowski, one of the researchers from the Polish Institute of International Relations (PISM), worked on the subject (1). NB: Poland also became, at the beginning of 2009, the sixth framework nation of the Eurocorps.

Projects that are not in contradiction with NATO, but on the contrary, would be closely linked to it. According to my colleagues at Gazeta, this proposed agenda is “ a direct result of France's return to NATO and American consent, even American desire, to see Europe contribute more to its own security ". It is also, on the Polish side, a "plan B" if the USA decides not to proceed with the installation of the anti-missile shield in Poland (an increasingly serious eventuality, with the budgetary restrictions of the other Atlantic side). We can also add that this is one of the first concrete consequences of the economic crisis (the Poles, like others, being forced to tighten their defense budget).

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)

(1) See in particular "The European Army as the future of the ESDP - illusion or necessity?", intervention in Warsaw during of a conference on the ESDP in November 2008.

(photo credit: Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Nicolas Gros Verheyde

Chief editor of the B2 site. Graduated in European law from the University of Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and listener to the 65th session of the IHEDN (Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale. Journalist since 1989, founded B2 - Bruxelles2 in 2008. EU/NATO correspondent in Brussels for Sud-Ouest (previously West-France and France-Soir).

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