Operations Forum

The European Medical Operations Forum: Ecole du Val-de-Grâce – Paris 30 th and 31 st January 2019

F. Gonzalez

© F. TESTE - EVDG

„The place where MEDOPS meets and cooperates“

On January 30th - 31st. 2019, the French Military Health Service organized the first edition of the European Medical Operation Forum (EMOF) at l’Ecole du Val-de-Grâce - Paris. This French military health project is one of the many military initiatives that are being developed within the European Intervention Initiative (E2I).

As a reminder, the French E2I was launched by the president of the French republic on September 27th 2017. This initiative relies on a simple premise: Europe faces acute and common threats. It must therefore, develop a common strategic culture: the armed forces of the European countries must know, understand each other and be capable of reacting swiftly together. E2I aims at developing this common European strategic culture by establishing political, military bonds and cooperation to reinforce Europe’s security and defence. Based on a pragmatic and an operation-orientated framework, the E2I reassembles 10 European countries , military capable of, and politically willing to ensure the security and the freedom of the European citizens through exchanges of officers, joint live exercises, doctrine and planning sharing, leading to common and shared military operations if necessary. The E2I is operation-orientated and does not interfere with any NATO or EU-PESCO capacity project. On July 28th 2018, Florence Parly, the French minister of armed forces signed the letter of intention together with the nine European partners.

With regards to the medical support of military engagements, we are also convinced that together we can improve our efficiency. The EMOF has been designed to gather the community of medical operations staff and allow them to know each other better, in a more informal manner, to present their organization, their operations but more importantly, to exchange their experience, concerns, and the challenges they are or will be confronted to, and find between them, the sensible and workable solutions that meet their needs, avoiding unnecessary duplications and redundancies, on an only „willing-to-re