| Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation | |
| Map: | OCCAR countries.svg |
| Abbreviation: | OCCAR-EA |
| Type: | Intergovernmental organisation |
| Purpose: | European armament cooperation |
| Headquarters: | Bonn, Germany |
| Leader Title: | Director |
| Leader Name: | Joachim Sucker |
| Num Staff: | ~370 (August 2023) |
| Budget: | €59 million |
The Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (French: Organisation Conjointe de Coopération en matière d'ARmement; OCCAR) is a European intergovernmental organisation that facilitates and manages collaborative armament programmes through their lifecycle between the governments of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
PlotData= Color:yellow mark:(line,black) align:left fontsize:M shift:(0,-3) # shift text to right side of bar
# there is no automatic collision detection, fontsize:XS # so shift texts up or down manually to avoid overlap shift:(25,-10)
at:2005 shift:15,-6 text: Accession of Spain at:2004 shift:15,-6 text: Re-organisation of Central Office at:2003 shift:15,-6 text: Accession of Belgium at:2001 shift:15,-6 text: OCCAR Legal Status at:1998 shift:15,-6 text: Signature of the Convention at:1997 shift:15,-6 text: Early staffing of Central Office at:1996 shift:15,-6 text: Franco-German precursor team at:1995 shift:15,-6 text: Principles of Baden-Baden at:1993 shift:15,-6 text: Franco-German Declaration
OCCAR was established on 12 November 1996 by the Defence Ministers of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Legal status was not achieved, however, until January 2001 when the parliaments of the four founding states ratified the OCCAR Convention. Other European nations may join OCCAR, subject to their actual involvement in a substantive collaborative equipment programme involving at least one OCCAR partner and ratification of the OCCAR Convention. Belgium and Spain joined the organisation in respectively 2003 and 2005.
Other states can participate to OCCAR programmes without becoming a member state. Currently the European Union member states and/or NATO members Turkey, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Poland participate in one or more OCCAR programmes without being formal members.[1] Australia also participates in OCCAR as a non-member with a focus on the Boxer, Tiger ARH and MU-90 Impact platforms. [2]
In 2023 Australia became the first non-European country to act as a participating state as part of OCCAR when it signed onto the MU-90 In-service support program. In November 2023 the Netherlands voiced its intention to join OCCAR.[3]
The highest decision-making body within OCCAR as corporate organisation is the Board of Supervisors (BoS). Each OCCAR programmes is supervised by a Programme Board (strategic decisions) and a Programme Committee (operational decisions). The programmes are executed by the OCCAR Executive Administration (OCCAR-EA) in accordance with the decisions of the supervisory bodies. OCCAR-EA is headed by the OCCAR Director (Joachim Sucker since Feb 2023) and consists of a Central Office and the Programme Divisions. OCCAR-EA employs over 300 staff members.
The 16 programmes currently managed by OCCAR are the following: