European Defence Agency

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European Defence Agency

Agency of the European Union

Location:

Brussels, Belgium

Formation:
- Signed
- Established

July 2004

Superseding pillar:

Common Foreign and Security Policy

Director:

Javier Solana

Website:

eda.europa.eu

The European Defence Agency (EDA), based in Brussels, is an agency under the Council of the European Union. The EDA was set up in July 2004 and it's stated intent is "to support the Member States and the Council in their effort to improve European defence capabilities in the field of crisis management and to sustain the European Security and Defence Policy as it stands now and develops in the future”.

The Agency has four main functions, relating to:

defence capabilities development;
armaments co-operation;
the European defence technological and industrial base and defence equipment market;
research and technology.

Javier Solana

On July 12, 2004 Javier Solana, European Union foreign policy chief, was appointed Head of the EDA.

The European Defence Agency is a continuation of the work of the Western European Armaments Organization (WEAO) and the Western European Armaments Group (WEAG) - it effectively represents the transference of their functions from the WEU to the EU framework, and thus continues the decommissioning of the WEU. As the WEAG and WEAO were before it, the EDA represents the long-term plan of establishing a European Armaments Agency which would centralise EU defence procurement; however, in practice, the EDA merely continues the defence standardisation and research co-operation which WEAG/WEAO represented in practice.

Many of the members are also staff members of or own stock in the weaponindustries !