EU states approve Swiss participation in military project

The government has also asked the EU for Swiss participation in the "Cyber Ranges Federation" project. Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

The member states of the European Union have approved Switzerland’s participation in a European defence project. An administrative agreement is still required for Switzerland to become a member of the Military Mobility project.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Switzerland fulfils the conditions and will bring “significant” added value to the project, the Council of the European Union said on Monday evening. Switzerland submitted an application to participate in September.

As a next step, the Netherlands, which is chairing the project, will formally invite Switzerland to join the project, the statement added. Switzerland would then have to enter into an agreement in order to become a full member.

+ Neutral Switzerland dips its toe in European military activities

The Military Mobility project aims to simplify military mobility on European territory. This means that in future, applications for cross-border transport can be processed and approved within a few days.

In addition to 26 EU member states – all except Malta – Canada, Norway and the US are also taking part in the project. However, the United Kingdom is still in the negotiation process.

In August the Swiss government approved Switzerland’s participation in two projects of the EU Defence Initiative for Permanent Structured Cooperation (Pesco). In addition to Military Mobility, the government would also like to participate in the Cyber Ranges Federation.

The aim of the latter is to improve cooperation in the area of cyber-defence. The computer simulation environments of several countries are to be linked for a more realistic exercise environment. The EU member states have not yet made a decision on this project.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].