In late January, Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland signed an agreement to create a military transport corridor between them, giving a much needed boost to the long discussed but rarely pursued goal of improving military mobility across Europe. Siemtje Möller, Germany’s parliamentary state secretary for defense, said the corridor was taking military mobility “on the road to a true military Schengen.” It was not the first time European policymakers have floated the idea of adapting the existing visa-free movement of people and commercial goods in the Schengen zone to the movement of troops and military equipment all over Europe. But the idea is now clearly gaining momentum.
In late January, Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland signed an agreement to create a military transport corridor between them, giving a much needed boost to the long discussed but rarely pursued goal of improving military mobility across Europe. Siemtje Möller, Germany’s parliamentary state secretary for defense, said the corridor was taking military mobility “on the road to a true military Schengen.” It was not the first time European policymakers have floated the idea of adapting the existing visa-free movement of people and commercial goods in the Schengen zone to the movement of troops and military equipment all over Europe. But the idea is now clearly gaining momentum.
The idea of a military Schengen first came up after Crimea’s annexation by Russia. Ten years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and two years after its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Europe is realizing that it better needs to prepare for the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin will decide to use his military even further westward. European military officials are digging into lessons learned in the Cold War—among them are specific lessons about military mobility.
Yet, several experts, diplomats and military sources told FP that the progress is much slower than desired. “Liberalization of rules is endorsed by everyone,” Tomasz Szatkowski, Poland’s permanent representative to NATO, told Foreign Policy. “But the problem is we have been talking about it since 2015.” They said Europe has acknowledged that the tensions of the cold war era may have returned and that European countries have a “long way to go” to effectively move their men and material.
The passage of anything related to a military mission in Europe is beset with obstacles, ranging from bureaucratic hurdles and gaping infrastructural gaps that can cause decisive delays. Urmas Paet, a European Union parliamentarian from the Baltic state of Estonia and the vice chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, rated military mobility to three out of 10 and said currently it can take anywhere between “weeks or at least more than a week” to send supplies to the Baltic states.
The paperwork is onerous. Several approvals need to be acquired from various ministries in various countries, and at times in different regions within a nation. Most roads and bridges have been built for civilian use and are unlikely to withstand the weight of heavy military hardware. Since the central European fuel pipeline doesn’t extend to the eastern states, longer delays in fuel supply could be a decisive factor. Furthermore, the rail gauge in former Soviet states differs in size from European rail gauge, and a transfer of thousands of troops and equipment from one train to another at a time of war will make it an even more time-consuming task.
Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former NATO commander who was the first proponent of “Military Schengen” and likely coined the term, said the good thing is that over the last few years at least the conversation has picked up. “Now I hear ministers in various organizations talk about it, he told FP from the recent Munich Security Conference.
Hodges said the ability to move with speed at a time of crisis was a crucial part of military deterrence doctrine. The ability of an armed force to mobilize and move quickly should be visible to the enemy and deter them from attacking in the first place, he said.
“We need to have real capability, not just equipment and troops, but also the ability to move with speed, to supply spare parts, store fuel and ammunition, and the Russians have to see that we have it,” he said.
Hodges applauded the agreement between Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland as a great start and said many more such corridors are under discussion. (Bulgaria’s head of defense, Adm. Emil Eftimov, said the allies should prioritize a corridor from Alexandroupolis in Greece to Romania and another one from the Adriatic Sea through Albania and North Macedonia.)
“They want to have corridors from Greece to Bulgaria up to Romania,” Hodges added. “The purpose of all these corridors is to have a smooth route, in terms of infrastructure, but also sort out customs and all legal hurdles ahead of time.”
The German, Dutch, and Polish corridor is the first of many envisaged and is expected to identify and resolve bottlenecks, and possibly provide a template for future corridors. A senior military source who spoke to FP on the condition of anonymity said that the corridor will look into a whole gamut of issues. In peacetime, he said, it will also allow the authorities to smoothen federal processes since in Germany every Länder, or federal state, has its own set of laws for troops or any dangerous equipment passing through its territory. At a time of war, he added, the corridor will be “much more than a road.”
“A hundred thousand or more soldiers would likely be on the move at a time of crisis. They would need a place to stop, to rest, access to warehouses with spare parts and to fuel storage centers. We would also need arrangements in place to take care of war refugees in such a scenario,” he said.
That is a tall order even for three nations. Cooperation between more than two dozen member states, particularly one involving armed men and dangerous machinery, will be encumbered with countless more regulations. Defense is “a national competence,” Paet added, and “countries share what they want to share.” Countries don’t readily share details of critical infrastructure such as where and how many bridges have military load classification and can carry the weight of heavy tanks.
Rafael Loss, a defense expert at the European Council of Foreign Relations think tank, said there was no catalog of infrastructural needs. “It’s not clear what kind of infrastructure is needed and where,” he told FP. According to a report by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) released in 2021, 90 percent of highways, 75 percent of national roads, and 40 percent of bridges in Europe are able to carry vehicles with the maximum militarily classified load of 50 tons. While the Leopard and Abram tanks—both of which proved their stealth against Russia in the Ukrainian battlefield—weigh significantly more.
“The Leopard tank weighs I think about 75 tons, and the Abrams is a little bit heavier,” Hodges said. “Most of these tanks will be transported on the back of HETs (heavy equipment transporters), and each HET weighs about 15 to 20 tons. It won’t be one tank on the road.” CEPA noted that “the combination of truck, trailer, and heavy tank could go well beyond 120 tons,” ruling out large swathes of existing infrastructure fit for military movement.
The EU has acknowledged the need for funding dual use—civilian and military—infrastructure and already approved funding for 95 such projects, although many more bid for the funds. The Polish ambassador and Hodges both said they were worried about the cut in funding allocated for the EU’s infrastructure funding vehicle, the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), from €6.5 billion to €1.7 billion.
Rail Baltica, a transnational rail project funded through the CEF, is planning to expand Europe’s rail network to the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, which is slated to be functional by 2030. But concerns about funding have been reported by local news outlets. Moreover, there is stiff resistance from France, Belgium, and even in Germany to spend on expansion of the central European pipeline to the eastern nations that often spend a larger share of their GDP on Europe’s collective defense than much bigger economies in the continent.
The European Defence Agency, which coordinates the EU’s defense cooperation, is working on standardizing the bureaucratic processes for land and air mobility and developing a common form to simplify the paperwork. But while it’s been agreed upon by 25 member states, there is reluctance by member states who have not yet integrated these “technical arrangements” into their national processes.
It is often hard to push all 27 members in the EU and more than 30 in NATO toward a consensus, but Hodges has a reason to be hopeful since the last NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Last July, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced three regional defense plans—a first since the end of the Cold War. He said NATO will plan for and strengthen its deterrence in the Atlantic and European Arctic in the north, in the Baltic region and Central Europe in the center, and in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the south. These plans will allow NATO members to assess exact defense requirements, apportion those to different allies, and in the process understand specific logistical needs. Hodges hopes this might prove to be a “game changer.”
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