The high representative Kaja Kallas will move to London this week for conversations with defense officials, and a summit is planned in mid -May.
The European Commission is trying to “intensely” that Member States will confirm the mandate to negotiate a security and defense association with the United Kingdom, a high EU employee said on Monday.
The negotiation of this association requires unanimous approval of the 27 Member States, but some countries, such as France, already have signs that they want a security pact to be included in a broader redefinition of relations, which seem to return to Brexit’s mantra that “nothing is wake up until everything wakes up.”
For the European Service for External Actions (SEAE), a higher security and defense cooperation with the United Kingdom “is an obligation”, because the current geopolitical context is “dramatically” different from what existed when the two parties celebrated the commercial and cooperation agreement that established the terms of their relationship, its general director of Europe, Matti Maasikas, he told the legislators on Monday.
“What could we do more? Being the EU, we need a legal framework, we need a legal basis for doing things, and since the Foreign Policy Declaration was out of the Commerce and Cooperation Agreement, we need to find new forms and a new basis for our cooperation,” Maasikas told Brussels and London, gathered in the European Parliament Parliament. United.
“The Security and Defense Association can be one of these instruments, it must be, if they ask me, if they ask the high representative.”
“For this, the high representative needs the mandate of the EU council, that is, the consent of all member states, and discussions are carried out intensely to obtain this mandate,” he added.
The British prime minister, Keir Strmer, who has come to power last summer, has insisted on a security and defense pact that, he said last month, must focus on research and development, military mobility throughout Europe, greater cooperation in missions and operations and industrial collaboration.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, British EU Relations Minister, said on Monday to the same joint parliamentary assembly as the United Kingdom “ready to negotiate”, while Catriona Mace, director of foreign policy and development of missions with the EU, said “the status quo should not be the extension of our ambition.”
“We have already worked closely in our collective security,” he said. “We have to do more together.”
Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to begin conversations with Russia about the end of the Ukraine War has accelerated the approach between the United Kingdom and the EU member states, with a series of leaders meetings in several formats in the last five weeks to discuss European defense and security guarantees for Ukraine.
On this subject, France and the United Kingdom are more aligned, both indicated their willingness to send troops to Ukraine as part of a peace maintenance mission, after a negotiated truce between Moscow and kyiv.
The high representative Kaja Kallas is expected to present an initiative for a coalition interested in providing military support of 40 billion euros in the short term to Ukraine, visit the United Kingdom on Wednesday, where he will meet with the state chief of defense of the Tony Radakin.
“I have great hopes in very fruitful discussions on all the issues,” Maasikas told legislators, “about the pragmatic cooperation that is taking place and also about the expansion of the base for this cooperation.”
