Joint Statement by Group of Five Defence Ministers – 13 January 2025
Source: gov.uk (2025-01-13)

Minister for the Armed Forces, Luke Pollard, joined Defence Ministers in Helenów, Poland, from the Group of Five nations: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the UK.

Support Ukraine as long as it takes by fostering defence industrial cooperation

We reiterate our unwavering support to Ukraine in its right of self-defence in order to counter Russia’s aggression and in achieving a just and lasting peace, in line with the international law, for as long as it takes.

The Ukraine Defence Contact Group and Associated National Armaments Directors (NADs) group will continue to be an important forum for us to announce and deliver military equipment for Ukraine. Through the International Capability Coalitions working with the newly installed NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) in close coordination with EU Military Assistance Mission Ukraine (EUMAM), we can focus on the delivery of capabilities to Ukraine that not only meets their current needs, but also enhances interoperability.

Similarly, as far as supporting Ukraine is concerned, we pledge to a growing coordination between dedicated NATO (NSATU, Joint Analysis Training and Education Centre), EU (EUMAM) and UDCG structures (capability coalitions), in order to create a fruitful synergy in terms of delivery, training and doctrine.

We underline that a strong European defence industry and supply chains will form a crucial component of deterrence. We encourage our domestic industrial sector to cooperate, engage and collaborate with the Ukrainian defence industry in order to create synergies and to improve the standards and production, which are instrumental to enable their self-defence and contribute to peace and stability in Europe. We envisage measures such as industrial information exchanges and joint ventures aimed to enhance the Ukrainian defence industry, to foster standardisation, interoperability and to avoid duplication. This process will be inclusive and open for partners to join with their own defence industries or with financial support. We will seek deeper defence cooperation in order to draw lessons learned from Ukraine’s fight for self-defence against Russia.

Strengthening our capabilities to deter and defend against Russia

We reiterate the utmost importance of the transatlantic bond. Given the deteriorated security environment, we consider it to be of paramount importance to focus on our collective efforts to keep the Alliance and Member States safe. We will achieve this through a stronger collective defence, in line with the NATO Concept for Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA), while maintaining NATO’s commitment to a 360° approach.

We see the upcoming 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague as an opportunity to strengthen NATO’s deterrence and defence posture, including through the full implementation of decisions from the Madrid, Vilnius and Washington Summits, a new NATO strategic approach to Russia and counter-hybrid measures.

We welcome the apportionment of NATO capability targets to be endorsed at the NATO Defence Ministerial Meeting in June 2025. We are committed to enhancing our military capabilities to strengthen NATO’s deterrence and defence posture in line with NATO requirements and fair burden sharing, in support of SACEUR’s regional plans, recognising that it requires increased defence spending and having in mind that leveraging defence effort is a prerequisite for it.

We recognise the importance of multinational initiatives, taking into account possible synergies between capability development and European defence industrial programmes (including European Defence Industry Programme – EDIP – the Ukraine Support instruments and NATO’s Defence Production Plan). We also underline the importance of activating mechanisms for European enhanced defence efforts including making use of financial incentives and instruments that will be financially bold.

Europe urgently needs strong capabilities to ensure its Security and Defence in the spirit of fair transatlantic burden sharing. To this end we aim to maximise EU-NATO cooperation to allow for a close and synergetic cooperation, including the crucial area of information exchange. It is vital to further align both the NATO Defence Planning Process and the EU’s Headline Goal Process. The basis for the development of capabilities should be NATO capability targets in keeping with NATO’s military specifications and standards. This will maximize our interoperability and overall warfighting capacity.

To this end, we have decided that our next meeting in Paris will focus on scoping options for streamlining procurement standards and procedures and will invite the Secretary General of NATO, the High Representative of the EU, and the EU Commissioner for Defence and Space.