A first stone to build the future defense Europe desired by Paris? The French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, announced this Friday April 26 that the European “rapid reaction force”, mentioned Thursday by Emmanuel Macron and intended for operations such as evacuations of nationals from countries in crisis, could see the light of day in 2025. “This is a key subject and one on which I hope we can achieve results next year, being very responsive and very rapid,” he declared during an interview on France 2.
The Minister of the Armed Forces justified this project by the fact that there were “many crises over which NATO is not competent and over which France often carries out operations alone”.
He cited the example of the evacuation of nationals from Sudan last year. “We launched an operation in Khartoum […], in which a major airlift was set up with A400Ms, with boats. It turns out it was France […] practically alone”, he explained. This mission, called Sagittaire, had enabled the evacuation of nearly 1,000 nationals of more than 80 different nationalities, including a little more than 200 French nationals. From the moment the Operations of this kind concern many countries, it is natural that this burden, which “has price, value”, is shared, he said.
“You have missions which are militarized, but which NATO does not have to know about for many reasons and about which we say today ‘let’s do it in Europe’. And that for us, it’s a pragmatism”. This rapid reaction force, “to provide security for European nationals, Portuguese, Italian, German and French citizens, we must be able to set it up very quickly,” he insisted.
A task force of 5,000 soldiers?
This project has been in the making since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “The European Union must be determined, rapid in its response to crises and it must invest in defense capabilities in complementarity with NATO,” explained, in March 2022, the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell.
As part of its “strategic compass”, a “white paper” aimed at defining the main directions of European security and defense until 2030, the EU plans to use the Battle Groups created in 2007 to constitute a reaction force of 5,000 soldiers. “The Battle Groups are operational, but they have never been used, due to lack of political will and financial means,” lamented the EU external actions service in 2022. Paris is now pushing to realize this ambition from next year.
Emmanuel Macron detailed his vision of Europe on Thursday, mainly discussing the areas of defense and economic and trade policies, after having taken stock of the European Union since 2017. “We are still too slow, not ambitious enough” , he affirmed, pleading for a “powerful Europe” which “enforces itself to be respected”, “ensures its security” and regains “its strategic autonomy”.