Brooks Tigner, Defense News, Brussel 22 april 2005
The 25-nation European Union plans to tighten its coordination of
cross-border armaments and defense research programs by placing their
control under the European Defense Agency. The agency said it will
absorb the activities of Europe's two main collaborative defense
research groups within the next year. During an April 22 meeting here,
the EDA's governing steering board agreed the agency should take over
all armaments and defense research contracts and activities of the
Western European Armaments Organization (WEAO) and the Western European
Armaments Group (WEAG). The two research entities belong to the
near-defunct Western European Union defense organization, nearly all of
whose member countries belong to the European Union. Folding them into
the EDA will make collaborative research and technology "more
cost-effective and tie it more closely to the capabilities needed" to
implement the EU security and defense policy, said Dirk Ellinger, EDA
director of research and technology, who chaired the meeting. Absorbing
the work of WEAG and WEAO "will give [research and technology]
collaboration a much stronger political impulse," added Nick Witney,
the agency's chief executive.
Created in 1993, WEAG's armaments activity never reached the level
expected and will close its doors in May. The nine-year-old WEAO,
however, has been more active. It oversees some 40 defense research
projects worth approximately 200 million euros ($261 million),
according to one EDA official, who said "we expect it not to take on
any new contracts or business until it, too, can be absorbed." That
process will take place progressively from now until the first quarter
of 2006, when WEAO's absorption will be complete, the EDA said in a
statement after the meeting. Noting that the value of WEAO's work
equals about 5 percent of all collaborative defense research in Europe,
the official said: "We aim to do much better than that."
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