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Ministerial declaration: ESDP ten years - Challenges and opportunities

Attachments

2974th EXTERNAL RELATIONS Council meeting
Brussels, 17 November 2009

The Council adopted the following declaration:

"A decade ago, in the aftermath of the conflicts in the Western Balkans, the European Council took the historic decision at its Summit in Cologne in June 1999 to establish the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) as a part of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, thereby demonstrating a commitment to jointly enhance the European Union's contribution to international peace and security. This has enabled the European Union to become an ever more active, capable and credible global actor, in line with the European Security Strategy (ESS), allowing it to combine in a comprehensive approach crisis management capabilities with longer term assistance and development policies.

The ESDP has steadily been developed and adapted to an increasingly complex global environment. Along with the successive deployment of 22 ESDP missions and operations in three continents across the full range of conflict prevention, crisis management, and post-conflict peace-building tasks, we have reformed our structures; elaborated and refined our planning capability; improved our crisis management and rapid response capabilities; and increased our cooperation with key partners and contributing Third States.

The development of the ESDP has, at the same time, highlighted the many challenges ahead. The demand for the European Union's actions in crisis management is steadily growing. We must continue to strengthen our collective capacity to promote peace, security and stability in the world. It is clear that these challenges cannot be met without adequate resources.

EU decisions have to be based on a common and strategic analysis of the threats and risks facing us. Based on the ESS, we need to take forward our common goals and strategic priorities, built around our common values of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law in conformity with the principles of the UN Charter and international law. We, in the EU, will develop our joint capacity to pursue policies which can enhance our own security as well as the security of our neighbours and the wider world. To this end, we need to continue to move forward in a number of key areas.