European Union red tape is driving Nato’s military planners “crazy” as they struggle with bureaucratic rules standing in the way of organising military manoeuvres, cross-border convoys and vital ammunition shipments to Ukraine.
It can take up to 45 days and sheaves of paperwork to arrange a military convoy, according to Nato officials, highlighting one case when main battle tanks from one country were banned from roads in another under safety regulations. Authorisations to move artillery shells or other munitions by railway can also take months.
Europe is rearming Ukraine to counter the Russian threat, and in the era of President Trump’s isolationism, stepping up defence preparations. However, a maze of differing regulations and gold-plated EU bureaucracy across the bloc is a big barrier.
“Sometimes it’s one of those things that kind of drives you a bit crazy,” said one Nato official, citing “layers of legal conditions, workforce rules, dangerous goods movement, even things like the energy transition”.
Railway convoys of large-scale munition supplies have become urgent as European allies scramble to get 155mm artillery shells and other ammunition to Ukraine. But red tape surrounding EU directives, such as 2008/68/EC on the transport of dangerous goods, means execution can take months.
“Ammo movement has been a big one. We would like to use rail as much as possible, but this is where the requirement or the demand to use rail meets the regulatory framework,” said the Nato planner. “It’s really hard to get rail movement planned. It takes weeks or months sometimes.”
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For example, form 302, a customs form to declare transit of military goods, is accompanied by hundreds of pages of guidance in Brussels-legalese. The note to even begin the customs procedure for a Nato convoy is 45 pages long, which includes instructions for the mandatory requirement “to fill in all the fields either in printed copy or in permanent blue or black ink”.
Paperwork includes shipping documents that are required to break down every item of the equipment on a cross-border military exercise into “Union and non-Union goods … covered by a separate EU form 302 and a separate shipping list”.
The guidance adds: “The shipping document must include the description of the goods. This description must be sufficiently detailed to allow the customs authorities to clearly identify the goods.” Alliance officials joke that showing the paperwork “might put you to sleep” with “forms that for every convoy, every piece of equipment … to sign out”.
An official familiar with the procedures, said: “Those customs forms are fine in peace time, but we need to be ready to do things in crisis conditions and so we need a regulatory environment that is conducive to meeting an exigency of a crisis.”
In the long term, European societies need to balance the aims of their “net-zero” legislative agenda with the reality of arming Europe for a future conflict, the official said.
“We’re moving heavily into decarbonising our societies and our economies. But the armed forces continue to use liquid [petrol/diesel] fuel, and that’s not going to change. So how do you keep that balance between a regulatory framework that is embracing change, but also protecting [what] the armed forces require to continue to defend our societies?”
Andrius Kubilius, the EU’s first defence commissioner, said military mobility was a “priority” in the coming year
NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP
A report by the European Court of Auditors in February was highly critical of the EU’s military process finding that “arrangements are complex and fragmented, without a single point of contact, which makes it difficult to know who does what”.
“Organising military movements may face significant delays for different reasons, such as red tape,” found the auditors. “Tanks from one EU country cannot move through another if they are heavier than road traffic regulations allow. Under normal circumstances, an EU country currently requires 45 days’ notification of cross-border movement authorisations.”
The European Commission and Andrius Kubilius, the EU’s first defence commissioner, have identified military mobility as a “priority” in the coming year.
A commission spokesman said: “We stand behind a ‘whole of the government’ approach on military mobility. This means we will have to focus on regulatory aspects with simplification. Also [there are] infrastructure investment needs such as corridors, cross-border missing links, protection of infrastructure and military mobility assets including special equipment, platforms for transporters, airlift, common warehouses and logistics. We will work on this in close co-operation with Nato.”