Ben Wallace traveled to Oslo yesterday to meet with peers and representatives from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, among others.
The group reviewed how Russia’s violent and unlawful invasion of Ukraine has affected European security, as well as how the JEF can help with longer-term capacity building and training in Europe.
They also used a table-top exercise to practice JEF’s joint response activity, displaying the nations’ capabilities to work together in times of crisis and how JEF and NATO would collaborate in such a scenario.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:
‘I was delighted to meet with my nine fellow defence counterparts from the Joint Expeditionary Force to deepen our relations and to support Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO.
Following the conference, the ministers released a joint statement expressing their strong support for Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership applications.
The JEF is a UK-led force made up of ten nations that work together to provide high-readiness forces for a variety of duties, complementing NATO and European security. The Baltic Sea region, the High North, and the North Atlantic, where its members are located, are the focus of the coalition.
The coalition works in tandem with NATO’s broader strategic posture, which was established at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales. It is nimble and responsive, led by the UK as a framework nation, acting either as smaller coalitions or with the weight of the entire grouping, as ten nations speaking with one voice.