Denmark joins PESCO military mobility project

Denmark has joined the EU's PESCO military mobility project. (EDA)

Denmark has joined the European Union's (EU's) Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) military mobility project, the Danish Ministry of Defence announced on its website on 2 October. The project aims to create a better framework for transporting military personnel and equipment, for example, by easing customs regulations and creating transport corridors.

Denmark joins 24 EU member states, plus Canada, Norway, and the US, in the Dutch-led PESCO project, which aims to co-ordinate and harmonise measures to facilitate military mobility nationally and in the EU and NATO. It is the second PESCO project that Denmark participates in.

The Scandinavian country joined its first PESCO project – on the deployment of cyber-reaction teams – in August.

In September Denmark also joined the European Defence Agency's (EDA's) programme on ‘optimising cross-border movement permission procedures in Europe' (CBMP). The programme aims to harmonise and simplify cross-border movement procedures, addressing both regulatory and procedural issues, and to develop optimised solutions without additional administrative burden, according to the EDA. It is an umbrella programme for developing two technical arrangements for border-crossing permissions: one for land movements and one in the air domain.

Denmark voted in a referendum in June 2022 to revoke its opt-out of the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy. This allowed it to join the EDA in March and PESCO in May.