
Resistance from member states such as Germany and Italy is stopping the initiative for European defense policy.
AI-generated summary
Kallas wanted to establish a group of experts to strengthen European defense policy.
The EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas canceled at short notice the establishment of a group of experts to strengthen European defense policy, which was actually planned for today - due to resistance from government representatives in some countries. "Some member states were of the opinion that this was not the right approach at this point," said an EU official in Brussels. After discussions with ministers, it was decided not to pursue the initiative any further.
According to information from the dpa news agency, the German and Italian governments, among others, had previously positioned themselves against the expert group. This has been confirmed to SPIEGEL from EU circles.
The expert group, under the auspices of Kallas, should develop proposals on how gaps in Europe's conventional military capabilities can be closed more quickly and effectively and submit a report with concrete recommendations. Leading political and military representatives from several EU states as well as Great Britain and Ukraine were planned to be members. They should be presented this Monday morning.
The federal government has recently been critical of Kallas
There was initially no official information about the reasons for Germany's resistance to the expert group. One possible reason is that the federal government has recently been rather critical of Kallas and wants to rely on the planning processes in NATO when it comes to defense policy issues. Berlin is currently advocating for large parts of the Foreign Service led by Kallas to be merged with the EU Commission.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Service said that it did not want to let up on the issue of defense and that new possibilities for cooperation with EU states should now be examined. "Nothing has changed in the diagnosis: Europe must make faster progress on defense," said the official. "We don't want to look back in a few years and realize that Europe was so focused on where it needed to be in 2035 that it failed to do what was necessary in 2027."

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