Setting the standard across Europe's forces

Both the EU and NATO want tighter civil-military planning for operations and the capabilities to support them, but neither is sure how to define the requirements or procurement procedures that would allow efficient dual use of the same equipment.

"Come up with common civil-military requirements or capabilities? This is a very new idea for the EU," Colonel Pekka Holopainen, chief of the EU Military Staff's force capability unit, said on 18 November.

Col Holopainen and other capability experts from government and industry reviewed the prospects for common military-civil platforms and systems during a one-day conference in Brussels organised by the Security & Defence Agenda policy forum.

Although common capability thinking is very much on the mind of the European Union Military Committee (EUMC) and its constituent 27 national chiefs of defence, the focus is on military-to-military interoperability issues for the time being.

According to Col Holopainen, his staff has just completed work on a 180-page study on the interoperability needs of the EU's future expeditionary missions, which would be presented to the EUMC on 25 November.

However, he added that it does not include interoperability of civil-military capabilities "but only military-to-military aspects. The thinking has only just started on that [among the 27 EU nations], so you can't look for anything earth-shaking right now", Holopainen told his audience of EU, NATO and industry security officials.