On 12-13 April 2011 the International EU Deployability Conference took place at the Institute and Museum of Military History, Budapest, Hungary.

This was the fifth EU Deployability Conference, after the conferences in Helsinki (06 November), Lisbon (07 November), Prague (09 March) and Seville (10 March). At this conference we had more than fifty participants from several multinational organizations and agencies as well as national representatives.

The aim of the conference was to gain a holistic understanding of the deployment challenges that the EU faces and to update participants on key initiatives put in place or being explored by EU Military Staff and other EU actors. In particular, they set out to investigate further new ideas and requirements for deployability, improve EU deployability concepts and SOPs, and to share and update information on activities being undertaken by movement and transportation (M&T) organisations in support of EU-led military operations. The conference had an emphasized focus on the provision of military transport to EU disaster response operations, with perspectives provided from the EU Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

In an attempt to achieve the closest possible coherence with strategic partners, this conference took place just prior to a NATO command structure level meeting called NATO Movement and Transportation Forum held at the same place on the 14th. Since the participation at the two conferences was overlapped we managed to gain synergy on specific topics. Both of these meetings harmonize with the multinational approach and help achieve our objectives, and encourage all EU nations to pool and share their capability with each other.

(kormany.hu, HM Sajtóiroda,)