help EU Member States develop their defence capabilities for crisis-management operations under the European Security and Defence Policy. The Agency will achieve its goals by encouraging EU governments to spend defence budgets on meeting tomorrow’s challenges, not yesterday’s threats; and by helping them to identify common needs and promoting collaboration to provide common solutions.

Everybody accepts that Europe has to raise its game on defence as a whole and on pursuing the new technologies which will give us the capabilities we need in the future and strengthen our industries and research institutions. (...) Today’s discussions have helped to establish a framework for identifying the most important objectives and the right funding mechanisms to ensure that we spend more, spend more together and spend more effectively in this crucial area.

The European Union is anxious to become a major player on the world stage. Haunted by it failure to stop bloodletting in the Balkans in the 1990s and taunts that it is an "economic giant but a political and military pygmy" -- in former NATO chief George Robertson's memorable phrase -- it has started to project power more muscularly in recent years. But the inability of EU defense ministers to rustle together enough troops to monitor elections in the Congo Tuesday shows how far the bloc has to go to convert its lofty goals into reality. (...) Expressing solidarity with Africa and unqualified backing for the United Nations in international forums is one thing. Asking European governments to risk their soldiers' lives to back these ideals appears to be another.