Quick 🇩🇪Zeitenwende rant. I happen to think that endless debates over whether the Zeitenwende glass is half-full or half-empty are futile/ depend on your time horizon/ outlook on life. Lots of voices declaring it doomed these days, one year into the new German government. But Germany's romance with Putin's Russia has, for all intents and purposes, ended. SPD leaders like Lars Klingbeil show the way forward. Energy independence from RUS means that the change can be sustained. Domestic debate on the necessity of arms deliveries in certain cases has

In the last days of February, Germany announced a radical shift in its defense policy.

In @WarOnTheRocks, @sarahbrockmeier and I have written up what happened and, importantly, what we think Berlin should do next. 🧵

warontherocks.com/2022/03/waking… ➡️ The boy who cried international responsibility?

For context: No, it's not the 1. time Berlin has announced its plans to "do more".

But today there's money on the table, the public is on board & the Chancellor is driving the change (Merkel always washed her hands of defense)

Really important to look at Green military and security ideas through the eyes of Germany's allies. Important to distinguish between them too, I think. From the perspective of the US and Central/Eastern Europeans, the Green pledge to properly equip the Bundeswehr +

https://twitter.com/thorstenbenner/status/1385473708576452610

commitment to NATO + willingness to compensate with conventional forces for rejection of nuclear sharing (+ ending Nordstream 2 + hardline on Russia) might go some way to compensate for anti-nuclear stance and for calling 2% arbitrary.

One thing Ursula von der Leyen would support are continued EU defence efforts, she has been a supporter of the defence fund and PESCO. She would have to try to explain her "Army of Europeans, not EU Army" concept to the rest of the EU. ...will have to.

.@CommonsDefence has published its report on the UK government's proposals for a future security partnership with the European Union, based in part on oral evidence I gave at the end of last year: publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cm… I am more pessimistic than I was then: the Defence Fund proposals are not leaving much room for third country involvement, and the Galileo negotiations have set a problematic precedent for the restrictive view the EU takes on the UK as a third country in defence.

The British government has published the slides on the post-Brexit security partnership, which it presented to the EU last week.
(Thread)

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl… Slides are split into 'internal security' and 'external security', with cross cutting issues data/information exchange; governance; UK<->Eu secondees.

I'll refer you to my colleagues @CaminoMortera @CER_IanBond for JHA &foreign policy questions; a few points on defence from me:

This is an interesting Brexit story, important to clarify that there are two different issues at stake here (thread):

1) UK industrial interests: The Commission through the European Space Agency (ESA), is currently managing a competition for a set of Galileo contracts.

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(Galileo is Europe's own global navigation satellite system, designed as a competitor to the United States’ GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, and China’s Beidou. Plan is for Galileo to be fully operational 2020).

For the record, on 'Does #PESCO equal an EU army?':

PESCO is about increasing interoperability and industrial competitiveness in Europe, and decreasing the number of different weapon systems (through financial incentives for PESCO members to jointly develop capabilities). 1/x

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Military capacities developed within PESCO remain in the hands of member-states that can also make them available in other contexts such as through NATO or the UN. 2/x