Estonia and the Czech Republic sign agreement to promote defence cooperation

The aim of the agreement is to cooperate in the field of armaments and their procurement.

“The Czech Republic has strong companies operating in the defence industry. We hope that the cooperation agreement will create closer connections with the industry there and bring more of their manufacturers to participate in our procurements,” said Magnus-Valdemar Saar, Director General of the ECDI.

Thanks to the memorandum of understanding signed on 15 August, Estonia and the Czech Republic will be able to start jointly procuring defence equipment in the future.

“In the future, joint procurements will make Estonia’s situation on the market much more favourable, as cooperation with the Czech Republic will increase the volume of procurements and thus create economies of scale. In addition, joint procurements will allow us to leverage our institution’s engineering expertise and share the costs of project management,” said Saar.

“I would like to stress that today’s signature of the Memorandum of Understanding is a symbolic but important step. It represents a new era in collaboration between our countries and an increasing importance of the Baltic region overall. Today’s discussion showed, that we have much to learn from countries like Estonia. For us the MoU is not only about increasing relations through defence industry, but also about sharing best practices and experiences in acquisitions and procurements. We hope to strengthen our relations with the ECDI and hopefully the MoU can lead to some future joint procurements,” said Lubor Koudelka, Director General of the Armaments and Acquisition Division of the Czech Ministry of Defence.