The State of the European Union. The European Parliament faces its most important elections yet

PROTECTING ITS CITIZENS IS BECOMING AN EVER MORE CENTRAL PART OF THE EUROPEAN UNION’S JOB, WITH THE DEVELOPMENT... 113 fund shared costs of military missions and operations, and to put this funding on a per- manent footing. Key progress in application of PESCO during 2018 The first ever meeting of EU defence ministers was held on 6 March 2018, attended only by the 25 members of PESCO. This meeting ap- proved a roadmap to implement PESCO, setting out deadlines and taking several specific deci- sions with respect to the implementation. It noted that participating states needed to sub- mit their national plans each January, following which, the High Representative would submit her report to the Council in spring, so that the Council could then evaluate the participation of Member states and their compliance with com- mitments. The PESCO meeting on 25 June 2018 then agreed a set of rules to govern PESCO projects. This document was endorsed by Member states following the Foreign Affairs Council, and es- tablished which states may intervene in projects and set out the basis for such intervention. It also agreed the project management and imple- mentation rules, and established provisional contributions by Member states to each project. The participating states then presented a na- tional plan, setting out how it would meet its binding commitments. The PESCO secretariat will then evaluate compliance. These national plans are not currently publicly available, with the exception of some countries, such as the Netherlands. The most important of the decisions to be implemented are those designed to integrate defence structures. The purpose of these pro- jects is to ensure that, in the EU, there are one or two types of aircraft (instead of six or seven), one or two types of tank (instead of more than ten), one type of frigate (rather than several). The aim, then, is to rationalize and significantly reduce defence spending by unifying the manu- facture of key components, as occurs in the United States system (where there is one model of plane, one tank, and one battleship). To achieve this, PESCO provides European funding through the sources described above. This stimulates defence projects involving sev- eral Member states, because any project involv- ing three or more states may be classified as a PESCO project and is thus eligible for significant European funding. It is also important to note that third party countries may take part in PESCO projects. This would enable the United Kingdom to participate, for example, although such countries would obviously not receive funding. The different scope and range of the 34 initial PESCO projects As noted above, the PESCO Council approved 34 projects in two blocks. The first of these was in March 2018 and the second in November. These projects vary greatly in scope and range, from the creation, improvement and promotion of radio systems or tanks, to military mobility systems or projects related to the manufacture of new combat weapons, such as development of the tiger helicopter, or a project in the field of cybersecurity (led by Lithuania). The really important development, though, is the implementation of the 34 PESCO projects, and the fact that some of these are part of the groups established by the European External Action Service (EEAS), including training pro- jects and joint exercises in operational domains,