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The Chiefs of Defence of the 27 European Member States met in Brussels, on the 27th October 2010, under the chairmanship of General Håkan Syrén . The agenda focused on capabilities and military operations, preceded by a series of information on the ongoing activities. Baroness Katherine Ashton, the High Representative, gave also her views on priorities for the Common Security and Defence Policy and the challenges of establishing the European External Action Service.
In the information session, an overview of the state of play of the EUMC Strategic Plan took place and also the Belgian Presidency reffered to the current semester activities.
The capabilities session was dedicated to the key issues launched in the framework of the Capability Development Plan (CDP). The subjects discussed were the Lessons Learned process, the improvement of the CDP, the improvement of the EU-NATO cooperation, the Analysis of budget cuts implications and finaly pooling and sharing. The session included an intervention by the European Defence Agency (EDA) Deputy Chief Executive, on short-term solutions to cope with a very challenging financial environment, underlining also the need for projects related to a long-term vision and contributing to European industry research and technology efforts.
In the operations session, reviews were given by the Operations Commanders of EUNAVFOR Atalanta which continues to receive plaudits at the highest levels for what it is achieving on a daily basis, EUFOR Althea confirming the possitive assessment in terms of fulfiment of the military responsibilities and EU Training Mission Somalia at a time when the first training cycle nears completion.
Beside the formal sessions of the meeting, in the framework of the strategic partnerships, CHODs were updated by Gen. Nikolay Makarov, Chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, on the ongoing transformation process of the Russian Armed Forces as well as the military cooperation between EU and the Russian Federation.
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