The Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council

It provides the overall political framework for NATO’s cooperation with Partner countries and the bilateral relationships developed between NATO and individual Partner countries with the Partnership for Peace programme.

What is its authority, tasks and responsibilities?

In addition to short-term consultations in the EAPC on current political and security-related issues, longer-term consultation and cooperation takes place in a wide rage of areas.

These include, but are not limited to, crisis-management and peace-support operations; regional issues; arms control and issues related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; international terrorism; defence issues such as planning, budgeting, policy and strategy; civil emergency planning and disaster-preparedness; armaments cooperation; nuclear safety; civil-military coordination of air traffic management; and scientific cooperation.

Who participates?

The EAPC is made up of the 26 NATO member countries and 24 partner countries.

How does it work in practice?

Most Partner countries have established diplomatic missions at NATO’s Headquarters in Brussels , which facilitates regular communication and enables consultations to take place whenever there is a need for them.

Meetings of the EAPC are held monthly at the level of ambassadors, annually at the level of foreign and defence ministers and chiefs of defence, as well as occasionally at summit level.

As of 2005, a new high-level EAPC Security Forum meets to discuss important security issues and look at how NATO and Partner countries can best address them together.

How did it evolve?

The decision, in 1997, to create the EAPC reflected NATO’s desire to move beyond the achievements of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (created in 1991) to build a security forum for a more enhanced and operational partnership.

The new forum was set up to match the increasingly sophisticated relationships being developed with Partner countries under the Partnership for Peace programme and in the context of the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where troops from 14 Partner countries had deployed in 1996 to serve alongside Allied counterparts.