European Union approves Strategic Compass

The European Union’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Council of Ministers approved the new Strategic Compass, a document with political and strategic guidelines for the EU’s common security and defence policy. The Portuguese Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, and the Minister of Defence, João Gomes Cravinho attended the meeting held in Brussels.

The Minister of State and Foreign Affairs claimed that "this is a highly important document for the strategic guidance of the EU’s security and defence policy. Its content represents the assessment of the security situation and the strategic environment around the Union, it defines the common strategic vision, sets the new resources available to defend our security and defines the goals and targets to meet by 2030 to bolster the European Union’s defence capabilities".

Among the most significant commitments, Santos Silva noted two: 

The first, "reinforcing the military and civilian missions of the common security and defence policy. These are missions that today engage around four thousand troops from member states, missions that, in most cases, are aligned with and complementary to UN missions. They are missions carried out in the most part in the African continent to meet the goals of producing security through military training, including military affairs and respect for the rule of law and human rights", and "civil protection missions in a strict sense" he said, adding that "this is one of the most meaningful commitments to Portugal".

The second is "having an EU rapid response to crisis capability", which Portugal has been following from the start. It is "envisaged that this capability will have up to five soldiers and will be fully operational by 2025", he said, underlining that "this is a capability the EU needs not just for military reasons but also to respond to humanitarian situations".

The Compass "clearly sets our intention to strengthen our partnerships with other organisations, to start with, the UN, NATO, the OSCE, the AU, the ASEAN, and very important partnerships such as with the USA, Canada, Norway, and other partners", he said.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs noted that the Compass "underlines what was contained in the Treaty of Lisbon with regard to intra-European solidarity for security and insists on one point, which is essential from the Portuguese perspective, that is, bolstering our security capability through our capacity to adapt and react to climate change and its consequences".

Historical moment

The Minister of Defence, João Gomes Cravinho, claimed that "the approval of the Strategic Compass is a milestone for the European Union and was greeted with a round of applause to signal the historical significance of this moment".

Gomes Cravinho recalled that the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union "also played an important role in drafting the document". During the time in which Portugal led the process, "we always underlined that it couldn’t be a document that would satisfy everyone fully, as that wouldn’t advance a Security and Defence Europe".

"We also insisted that we didn’t have to pick between realism and ambition. We always said that to be realist, it would have to be ambitious, in that the world demands this of the European Union", he claimed.

The Compass "is a pretty operational document with measures that we will now develop jointly, it offers a strategic sense to several instruments that already exist, as the Security and Defence Europe has been consolidating over the last few years, such as with the European Peace Facility, the European Defence Fund, and the work undertaken by the European Defence Agency".

The Minister of Defence said that "from the Portuguese side, we are pleased because our contributions were incorporated in the document, significantly strengthening the importance of setting up partnerships with African countries and bodies and reinforcing Africa’s centrality in Europe’s security" and reinforcing "the reference to the relevance of maritime security to Europe".

"Concluding this process heralds a new stage for a Security and Defence Europe", concluded Gomes Cravinho.