Riigikogu supports significant facilitation of military mobility in European Union
Today, the European Union Affairs Committee confirmed Estonia’s positions on an initiative aimed at facilitating the movement of weapons, defence equipment, military goods, and servicemen within the European Union.
The Chairman of the Committee Peeter Tali said that Estonia supported the goal of the regulation, which is aimed at promoting the movement of equipment, goods and people within the European Union, and to do this in a way that disrupts civilian transport as little as possible. “From Estonia’s point of view, the most important is the North-South connection, which means the construction of the European-gauge Rail Baltic rail line and the four-lane Via Baltica motorway. These tie us to the free world and our allies,” Tali said. “We also support more efficient dual-use connections with EU candidate countries, such as Ukraine and Moldova.”
Tali believes that the peace-time style bureaucratic organisation of the mobility of weapons, equipment, and servicemen has long ago fallen behind the military needs of the allies in the deteriorating security situation, which is why it would make sense to use new smart and innovative digital solutions. Estonian businesses have already developed completely new and efficient digital solutions.
Estonia promotes the use of existing EU solutions, harmonising border crossing formats, and separation of land, sea, and air formats only in accordance with the needs of NATO. Estonia also supports shortening the proceeding time of permits to three working days and creating a cyber secure and sovereign digital system that is compatible with the EU and NATO solutions.
The regulation also includes information exchange between the Member States and the European Commission, as long as data protection is assured and there are restrictions on sharing sensitive data—and Estonia supports this; what we do not support is giving European Commission access to the register of military vehicles. Estonia believes that this access and knowledge must remain in the defence forces of the Member States.
The positions of the Government on the regulation on introducing a framework of measures to facilitate the transport of defence equipment, military goods, and servicemen within the Union was presented by the Minister of Defence Hanno Pevkur. The European Union Affairs Committee approved the positions, taking into account the opinion of the National Defence Committee.
Riigikogu Press Service
Merilin Kruuse
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