Tuesday, 22 March

The NATO Defence Ministers Summit was convened yesterday in Brussels and important decisions regarding the future of the Alliance were taken. The Minister of Defence, Mr. Evangelos Venizelos, attended the Summit.

The Defence Ministers made decisions about the geographical determination of the Joint Force Commands and of other staff entities for NATO’s New Command Structure, under the framework of the Lisbon Summit of last November. The New Command Structure is simpler and is adapted to the fiscal situation of all the Alliance’s member-states.

One of the most important changes being introduced by the New Command Structure is the elimination of the Component Command Air Izmir (CC-AIR) and its substitution by an Allied Land Forces Command which is being transferred from Spain. The sole Component Command Air (CC-AIR) will be based in Germany (Ramstein), while the only Component Command Maritime (CC-MAR) will be based in the United Kingdom (Northwood).

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Monday, 22 November 2010

 

In a Press Conference given Monday, November 22, at the MoD in Athens, Minister of Defence, Evangelos Venizelos gave details on NATO’s Lisbon Summit (Nov. 19-20, 2010)

Key-points of Evangelos Venizelos’ opening remarks:

• NATO’s new Strategic Concept replaces the previous version that had been agreed upon by member-states during the 1999 Washington D.C. Summit.
• Greece’s objective was the re-affirmation of Article 5 (of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty) in the new document and the confirmation, once again, of the Principle of Consensus in Alliance decisions.
• NATO is being transformed into a political-military Organization that deals with all kinds of threats and challenges (including terrorism, energy-related issues, immigration, climate change, and most importantly cyber-attacks) and needs a cyber-defence capacity (to be approved on March 2011).
• Member-states, following the acceptance of the Strategic Concept by the Heads of States and Governments, no longer object to NATO’s nuclear and missile defence capabilities. NATO will continue to be a nuclear Alliance of a defensive nature, entailing however, a strong element of deterrence.

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