EU countries have urged the UK to participate in Brussels-led peacekeeping missions, as London seeks to deepen security cooperation with the bloc, Report informs referring to the Financial Times.
Several EU ministers used a meeting with UK foreign secretary David Lammy on Monday to call for Britain to participate in the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy missions, people briefed on the discussions said. CSDP operations deploy civilians and troops on peacekeeping and conflict prevention missions around the world.
The offer came as Lammy joined a meeting of the EU’s 27 foreign ministers in Luxembourg to discuss the prospect of deeper defense cooperation between London and Brussels, as part of a wider “reset” of post-Brexit relations. UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to improve EU-UK ties after Labour won power in July, indicating that a security pact with Brussels, covering areas such as defense and energy cooperation, would be at the heart of that new initiative.
“We cannot change the past but we can define the future,” Lammy told the EU’s 27 foreign ministers over a working lunch at the Luxembourg meeting, according to three people briefed on his remarks. The EU currently has 24 ongoing CSDP missions, involving some 3,500 troops and 1,300 civilian officials. Norway participates in the scheme despite not being an EU member. Britain was not expected to announce CSDP mission participation imminently, “but they will do” eventually, one of the people said. The UK is expected to take the proposals away to consider.
UK officials signaled Britain is keen to strengthen cooperation with the EU and has not ruled anything out. In a joint opinion article for Euronews on Monday, Lammy and the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell said the UK and EU were “heavily engaged in responding to conflicts and crises. But we are always stronger when we work together to tackle these challenges . . . Yet there is still more for us to do to strengthen UK-EU co-operation in defense and security”.
Lammy said his attendance at the meeting was a “historic moment that marks our EU reset . . . The UK and Europe’s security is indivisible”.