The Council of the EU tops up the European Peace Facility financial ceiling by an additional €3.5 billion

On 26 June, 2023, EU ministers adopted a decision to raise the financial ceiling of the European Peace Facility (EPF) by an additional €3.5 billion. This is the second top-up in only six months, with the first one (worth €2 billion) being agreed upon on 12 December, 2022 (Council of the EU, 2022) and operationalised on 13 March this year. As commented upon by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, this step provides the Union with the necessary funding to remain steadfast in “delivering concrete military support to our partners’ armed forces” (Council of the EU, 2023).

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Turkey’s Participation in the PESCO Military Mobility Project

Since its establishment in December 2017 by the Council of the European Union under the Council Decision 2017/2315, the EU Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), which consists of all EU Member States (MS) minus Denmark and Malta, has supervised the development of 47 projects (PESCO Secretariat, 2021). Among these projects is the Military Mobility (MM) project, founded in 2018 and characterized by the nearly full participation of PESCO Members, apart from Ireland. Coordinated by the Netherlands, the MM project aims to simplify and standardise cross-border military transport procedures, side-stepping long bureaucratic procedures for the movement of military personnel and equipment through or over the EU MS (PESCO Secretariat, 2021), thereby enhancing the availability, interoperability, flexibility, and deploy-ability of the forces of the MS, as required by Article 2(c) of Protocol 10 of the Treaty of the European Union (TEU). This purpose is coherent with the binding Commitment 12, undertaken by PESCO participating states, which requires states to simplify and standardise “cross border military transport in Europe for enabling rapid deployment of military materiel and personnel” (PESCO Secretariat, 2021; Latici, 2019, 2).

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