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Defence: Keynote speech by High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell at the EDA High-level Symposium on Military Mobility

European External Action Service (EEAS)

30.01.2024
Brussels
EEAS Press Team

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Good afternoon to everybody,

Bonjour tout le monde, ravi d'être ici à l'Académie militaire de la Belgique. Merci à la ministre [de la Défense de la Belgique, Ludivine Dedonder] pour son hospitalité et merci à tout le monde pour cette rencontre.

I am one of the ones who ask, "what is military mobility?". Well, military mobility is about the mobility of the military, no? It is quite ontological, but it is what it is. We have to move our military capacities, and sometimes it is difficult, and we have to make it easier.

So, I think it is important that the European Union has taken seriously the fact that military assets that can be in one end of Europe have to be moved to the other end of Europe, because the threat is there. It can take a long [time] depending on the roads, depending on the railways, the bridges, [or] the airfields. This is a very prosaic thing but very important, and I think it is good that the European Union has put a budget line in order to improve the mobility of our military assets.

I want to thank the Belgium Presidency of the Council [of the European Union]. Once again, thank to Ludivine [Dedonder] with whom, these days, we are sharing a lot of events - [talking about] the outer space the other day, and here talking about the military mobility [with] the European Defence Agency because I know they have been doing important contributions to organise this high-level event.

I want to say hello to the Defence Ministers of Germany [Boris Pistorius], Luxembourg [Yuriko Backes], the Netherlands [Kajsa Ollongren], and Poland [Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz], among other representative of the defence structure of the European Union.

I know that we will also have Commissioner [for Transport, Adina] Vălean, who is, at the end, the Commissioner who is taking care of that, because we talk about dual-use goods. The military mobility is also for the civilian mobility - thank God. We are not going to use it only for military purposes.

Also, I do not want to forget our friends from NATO and from the United States.

As I said, military mobility is about ensuring that we have the capabilities, the structures, the procedures - not only physically structures, but also procedures - to swiftly move troops and military equipment across our external borders, passing through our internal borders.

In the European Union, we made the internal borders invisible. For ordinary citizens, they cross the borders [but] they do not see the borders. But they exist, and when a crisis comes, the border can become an obstacle, in particular for heavy machinery related to tragic events - which is the case of defence.

We see at [the] moment Russia's aggression against Ukraine, events that happen in the far East of Europe that in some cases will [require] our capacities to be mobilised towards the East. But also, when we need to quickly evacuate EU citizens, in the case of a crisis.

It can be in the context of our Common Security and Defence Policy actions. It can be at the level of NATO, at the level of a United Nations operation or in any other national or multilateral effort.

It is not in the frontpages of the newspapers, but it is essential for our security and for our deterrence capacity.

We are talking these days about how do we compensate decades of under-investment in military capabilities. Suddenly, everybody says, "Oh, look, we have not been investing enough in defence" - and that is true. And how [do] we compensate years and years of taking the peace dividends and using it for social welfare and for civil expenditure - which is good? Everybody prefers butter to cannons, but sometimes if you do not have cannons, you do not have butter. And in this particular case, today, I think the Europeans have discovered that they are facing a much more confrontational and dangerous world.

And to start with prosaic things, it applies also to military mobility - where also we need to mend years of neglect and under-investment. I [was] Minister of Public Transports in Spain for six years, and when we were building roads, railways, and airports, I never had in mind - and my military never made me aware - that these roads and these railways could be used in some cases to allow the passage of heavy armoured vehicles which have a weight, which have a whole [length], which have a speed and they have specific requirements that 4x4 do not have.

Never. I have never been told by the military, "Take care, this bridge will never support the passage of a Leopard [tank]. The Leopard is too heavy, or the road is too narrow." And now we realise that these things have to be moved. By the way, I wonder how Spain would move the Leopard tanks, which certainly are not useful to fight against France or Portuguese invasion[s]. Certainly not, they are inside Spain, but they are not conceived to fight against an invasion from the Pyrenees or from the Tajo river. They have to be moved somewhere else if we want to use them. And how do we move [them]?

I think that since the end of the Cold War, all Member States stopped thinking and looking after the military requirements for transport infrastructure. We stopped thinking about that because it was not in our imagination, it was not on our "radar screen" - or something a Minister has to take care of because it will not happen. There are no sign-posts indicating the maximum payload of bridges, I have never seen one but - you know - this is necessary in case some heavy machinery or heavy military capacity have to move.

We have different infrastructural legacies - for example different rail gauges. In order to prevent invasions from the neighbour, the best thing to do is to have a different gauge for the trains so that the enemy cannot use the train to come into your territory. But now, the problem is that it is not the enemy who wants to enter your territory, it is you who wants to go out of your territory. And it requires to make complex capacities in order to change the gauge from one network to another. Or rules - different rules in different borders that make [it] difficult to move across borders.

This means delays - sometimes weeks of delay - to move our troops.

This is the problem. We cannot afford this situation. We have to be fast and robust in changing it.

And then comes the issue of cross-border permissions, logistics and requirements which rarely attract political attention. This is why it is important that this event today [brings the] spotlight on the ongoing work on military mobility.

The problem is clear, but what is the solution? What are we doing in order to try to look for a solution?

Since 2018, the European Union has taken actions in this domain.

I started participating in the debates at the European Council on the financial perspective in 2019-2020 - and the world of "military mobility" appeared, together with the European Peace Facility.

I have to say that when the moment came to cut because the expenditures were too big, there were some things that were sacrificed to the economic balance - and military mobility was one of them. The initial demand, the initial request severely cut in order to balance the budget. Now, maybe we regret it. But it was in 2019-2020, nobody could imagine a war on our borders and yes, military mobility is important, but I [witnessed] that this was cut quite a lot.

But at least it existed, and we have started developing a plan in coordination with NATO. This plan had to take investment decisions. For that, the European Defence Agency has been working on harmonising and simplifying cross-border procedures.

And we have spent [€1.7 billion] in transport infrastructure, which certainly are dual-use transport infrastructures, and co-funded about 100 [95] military mobility projects in 21 countries. So, we have to summarise what we have done: it is to spend €1.7 billion in 95 military mobility projects in 21 countries.

But the current situation, with this war against Ukraine and multiple crises around the world, show us that [this] certainly is not enough.

In November 2022, we raised our level of ambition with another plan, "[Action Plan on] Military Mobility 2.0", promoting a whole-of-government approach connecting the work on infrastructure and regulatory aspects with capability development, resilience, preparedness and partnerships.

We can build bridges and upgrade harbours and airports, but we also need the lift capabilities to effectively use them.

For example, facing cyber-attacks or sabotage that can effectively block the military use of civilian and dual-use infrastructures.

In times of war, the military needs to have priority access and to be able to rely on commercial transport providers. Most of the time, the armies do not have the capacity to transport everything quickly. They need to look for civilian actors that may have the access that could provide our armies with the transport capacity that they cannot have 100% [inaudible].

That is why, we need to cooperate more - among us, and with the civilian sector.

Among us, we have PESCO - our Permanent Structured Cooperation - that has proven to be an important framework to advance on Military Mobility.

We have a PESCO project led by the Netherlands - I am sure the Dutch Minister [of Defence], my friend Kajsa [Ollongren], will say more on that. But other PESCO projects are also relevant, for example on a Network of Logistical Hubs or on Outsized cargo.

We have done progress, but I think we cannot be satisfied. We need to work faster and harder to keep up with the deteriorating environment.

This brings me to the third point: the work ahead. I started defining the problem, then I have explained what we have done, now - and this is the most interesting - [I am going to explain] what are we going to do or what we would like to do?

First, we need to renew the Military Mobility Pledge.

The first pledge [in] 2018 set out clear-cut commitments that led to improvements at the national level. [As] I said, [for example by] providing permissions for cross-border movements within a maximum of five working days.

Time now has come to translate our lessons from the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine into a new and more ambitious pledge. This will require a clear commitment at ministerial level, because it is the Member States who have to do it.

We have to identify the priority transportation corridors in the European geography to support them with logistical hubs. It has to be done in cooperation with the Member States, DG MOVE, the EU Military Staff, in order to identify the corridors and the hubs. But we need a real Member States' engagement at the expertise and political level.

We have also to invest in increasing the resilience of our transport system. There are a lot of problems; some cyber-attacks man-made, climate change - also man-made but with a direct impact that is not going to be possible to stop immediately, it is already there - challenges to [our] networks, when there is a clear crowded situation between the civilian and military use in a critical moment.

For that, we need to increase our preparedness, and for that, we need exercises. We need to exercise ourselves trying to simulate a hypothetical moment in which we have to face a reality. We have to test our readiness to identify hurdles and bottlenecks.

Military mobility was already part of our table-top exercises, but we need to go beyond and include military mobility elements also in our 'live-exercises' to test the capacity of our procedures in 'real-life' time situations.

We did that in Spain, in the live exercise that we did in [October], in Rota.

We will do [it] again this year, to test our cross-border movement procedures and the resilience of our military mobility networks against cyber threats.

This will be especially important for our [EU] Rapid Deployment Capacity, because it has to be rapid, it has to be able to move quickly. Otherwise, it will not be 'rapid'.

And [we have] to make a better use of PESCO. PESCO, some time someone told me "c'est la belle au bois dormant". It is a great invention of the treaties, but it is [having a] difficult time to become a reality.

It is becoming a reality, but we have to make better use of the framework that PESCO is providing us.

We should put more ambitious and concrete proposals on Military Mobility in the PESCO framework. This has to be done in the next Strategic Review of PESCO. Please, take note of that: in the next Strategic Review of PESCO, military mobility has to have a more important role.

We need to work more together. I know it is easy to say, and difficult to do. We have to do more together at national level, among European Union institutions. I mean between the European Defence Agency and intergovernmental body, the [European] External Action Service with its Military Staff, and the [European] Commission. Commission, Council and Member States have to work more together and less in silos.

We have to work more among Member States. One concrete example [is that] later today the Ministers of Germany, the Netherlands and Poland will sign a Letter of Intent to create a 'harmonised corridor'. This is our geography, and geography matters for the neighbours. It is a little bit ridiculous to discuss Military Mobility between Greece and Portugal, for example, because certainly it is not going to be the most important scenario. In any case, [to] identify a corridor can only be [done] by plane.

But there are clearly "nœuds"- I do not know how to say "nœuds" in English -, "poles" in which the Military Mobility will create a problem if the situation becomes worse. Certainly, between Germany and Poland, a lot of Military Mobility problem can [rise] if the situation becomes worse.

Then, we have to work more with NATO and other key strategic partners. When I am saying NATO, I am saying the United States, Canada, [and] Norway. It [military mobility] has to be a flagship in our cooperation, between NATO and the European Union. It has to be a strategic partnership.

And both organisations [have requirements that] are already 95% identical, but [there is] still something missing.

And this brings me to the end, saying that we live in a turbulent geostrategic environment. I was running here to talk with you, coming out of a meeting about the Sahel. Military mobility is not something 'nice-to-have' and if you do not have it nothing happens. It is a must. And when something is a must, and you do not have it, it means that you have to be acting faster and better.

Infrastructure upgrades must be expedited. Technology has to be adopted, accelerated, and collaborative efforts have to be intensified.

Our plans should not be something that lives on paper. It has to be in concrete implementation, on the ground. Inaction may have serious consequences. Today, the security and the stability of the European Union is at stake.

It is not a joke. I said that when I presented the Strategic Compass. I said: "Europe is in danger", and people smiled saying "Oh, this is a marketing sentence in order to sell the product." Little by little, people are [becoming] more and more conscious that certainly, we are facing challenges, turbulence and dangers, and we have to prepare for that.

Thank you to Belgium for organising this event. Thank you to the European Defence Agency. And thank you to all of you.

I think it is not the first time [and] it will not be the last opportunity to discuss about military mobility - and I hope today's exchanges will help all of us to imagine a new ambition, to put on the table new ideas, and to make these ideas a reality.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-252131