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EurActiv (27 November 2020)

By Alexandra Brzozowski

With the pressure in the EU’s strategic environment mounting, the bloc should not miss the opportunity of starting to use all the tools at hand to increase its defence cooperation, Jiří Šedivý, chief executive of the European Defence Agency (EDA) told EURACTIV in an interview.

Last week, the EU’s first-ever defence review, the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), painted a gloomy picture for the bloc’s ability to achieve ‘strategic autonomy. The report assessed national defence planning and capability development efforts of 26 member states, minus Denmark, which has opted out of EU defence initiatives.

“European defence suffers from fragmentation, duplication and insufficient operational engagement,” the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell acknowledged.

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