Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, which military exercises UK armed forces have been involved in that have (a) included other EU member states and (b) been EU-led.

Exercises with international Allies and partners are critical to improving our Armed Forces' interoperability on deployment and enhancing collective Defence through NATO. Last year we saw an excellent example of this in NATO's Exercise Trident Juncture, the biggest military exercise in 10 years. Although the EU does not lead large scale military operations like NATO, it does support the interoperability of our Armed Forces through its battlegroup framework and small scale exercises led by its Member States. The UK will hold the leadership of the battlegroup in the second half of this year.