Military Mobility

Military Mobility is one of the initial projects launched under the European Union's (EU) Permanent Structured Cooperation in Defence (PESCO) facility.

[1][2] Last month, [Lieutenant General Ben Hodges] sat in his jet on the tarmac of Papa Air base in Hungary, engines screaming in the 40-degree heat, as an aide collected the passports of the general and his entourage, including a German military attaché and this reporter, and brought them to be checked by Hungarian border guards waiting in a nearby car, so that the entourage could fly on to a base in Bulgaria.

The zone was proposed by Commander of United States Army Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges who made some initial headway via NATO, but issues like passport checks and weaknesses in transport links that can't take large military vehicles persisted.

In 2017 Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, Dutch defence minister, proposed a Schengen-inspired agreement for movement as part of the PESCO facility gaining ground as a result of Brexit and geopolitical pressures.

This entails avoiding long bureaucratic procedures to move through or over EU Member States, be it via rail, road, air or sea.

[9] Austria has nonetheless opposed the Turkish bid, with the Austrian defence minister arguing that Turkey "does not fulfil the admission requirements for third countries".