The meeting of EU Defence Policy Directors was held on 20 April 2011 in Brussels, in order to prepare the forthcoming meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council in Defence Ministers’ composition scheduled for May in Brussels.

The meeting was chaired by Mr. Maciej Popowski, Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service. Mr. Walter Stevens, new Head of the Crisis Management and Planning Department participated for the first time in the meeting of Defence Policy Directors.

In the first part of the meeting the Defence Policy Directors discussed pooling & sharing work strands especially the work done by the Military Committee and the European Defence Agency. The economic and financial crisis gives special importance to this initiative that can be a solution to the budgetary constraints in the defence sector. Hungary supports the regional approach in the field of pooling & sharing; therefore the Ministry of Defence has organized regional meetings in this spirit.

Defence Policy Directors discussed the possibility of further improvements of the EU crisis management planning and conduct procedures, as well as the EU battle groups. The second working session of the meeting was dedicated to the latest developments of EU-NATO and EU-UN relations.

At the working lunch Defence Policy Directors addressed questions of the ongoing military operations of the Union – especially ATALANTA and EUTM Somalia; and the question of planning the EUFOR Libya operation was also on the agenda.

(Ministry of Defence)