Europe’s military cooperation pact has been called a “Sleeping Beauty” and a progress report obtained by POLITICO shows the much-vaunted initiative is struggling to wake up.
The program, known as Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), brings together 25 EU member countries, working in smaller groups on a total of 46 joint projects. The projects cover land, sea, air, space and cyberspace and range from drone defense through maritime surveillance to intelligence training.
But three and a half years after PESCO was launched to great fanfare by EU leaders, many of the projects are still in their infancy and a significant number are behind schedule, according to the annual report.