DK finally drops all of its defence opt-out
On June 1st last year, a majority of the Danish electorate voted ‘yes’ to abolishing the defence opt-out. Just over a year later, Denmark is fully entering European defence cooperation when Denmark is voted in as a member of the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation (Pesco) at a meeting of defence ministers on Tuesday. Thus, the last vestiges of the defence opt-out are gone, Acting Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said on his way to the meeting in Brussels. “It is certainly a historic day that we are now joining the Pesco cooperation. This means that we have removed all obstacles to being able to cooperate on the EU’s defence dimension,” Lund Poulsen said.
Pesco will ensure greater coordination of national defence policies. At the same time, groups of EU countries can join forces on defence projects via Pesco. “We will have some opportunities to collaborate in a different way than we have done before. NATO is still the cornerstone for Denmark. But in addition, we can now participate in collaborative projects, which means that we get better tools than we have had before in defence,” he added. /ritzau/