Rotation in EUTM Mali

The Hungarian Defence Forces have been participating in the EUTM Mali mission since 2013. The Hungarian trainers serve at the Koulikoro training centre, where they do their main activities, but if necessary, they can deploy in mobile training teams to military bases in Mali. Currently two Hungarian soldiers are serving in the African country.

The recently finished latest training cycle has been a special one because it saw the 10,000th Mali soldier completing his training. On this occasion, the training center held a small ceremony at which the Spanish, Portuguese and Hungarian trainers received memorial coins and certificates before the end of their tour with the mission.

The rotation of the homecoming Hungarian servicemembers has already arrived in the area of operations, where its members took over their tasks after a short acclimatization, and started working.

The contributions the EUTM Mali HQ and the staff of the Koulikoro training center are making go a long way towards enabling the military of Mali to guarantee the security of its own country. This, however, is not expected to happen in the near future, therefore it is now timely to discuss the possible extension of the mandate of the mission in May 2018, and the EUTM Mali HQ is working to achieve that, in cooperation with local authorities and coordinating with the EU military command in Brussels.