The European Defence Agency’s Chief Executive, Claude-France Arnould, together with Peter Round, EDA Capabilities Director and Philippe Rutz, EDA Project Officer Pooling & Sharing, visited the European Air Transport Command (EATC) in Eindhoven on 23 November 2012.
The EATC is a multinational command, established on 1 September 2010 by the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Germany to pool and share national military assets. Luxembourg joined the EATC as fifth nation on 22nd November 2012. Earlier this year, Spain had also expressed its interest in joining the EATC. The Command plans, tasks and controls the missions of major parts of the air transport- and air-to-air refuelling fleets of the member states (almost 150 aircraft). Additionally, the EATC bears a nationally defined level of responsibility for aircrew training, coordination of training and exercise objectives as well as the harmonisation of appropriate air transport regulations of the nations. The overall objective is to manage the scarce resource air transport as effectively and efficiently as possible.
During its visit, the Agency’s delegation had useful discussions with the EATC’s Commander, Major General Pascal Valentin as well as with Colonel Christian Schmidt, Director of the Movement Coordination Centre Europe. Claude-France Arnould noted that the EATC was a very successful model for pooling in the operational area with existing similar potential in the functional area. As the two organisations share important areas of interest such as diplomatic clearances for military transport aircraft, air-to-air refuelling, a future A400M multinational unit, enhanced cooperation especially in the area of maintenance and exchange of spare parts could be envisaged. Discussions also included the air-to-air refueling initiative of the European Defence Agency.
More information:
- For more information on diplomatic clearances for military transport aircraft, click here.
- Latest news on the Agency's multirole tanker initiative is available here.