TERRORISM, Russian adventurism, chaos in the Middle East and the possibility of a President Donald Trump: it is hardly surprising that the European Union wants to put defence and security at the top of its agenda. As the European Commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker, put it in his “State of the Union” speech on September 14th: “Europe needs to toughen up. Nowhere is this truer than in our defence policy.”
Although personally devoted to the federalist vision of a European army, Mr Juncker was careful not to raise its spectre on this occasion. Instead, he rattled off a number of ostensibly more achievable goals, some of which had been floated a few days before in a paper prepared by the French and German defence ministers for discussion. It was discussed at last week’s informal summit of European leaders in Bratislava; next week, EU defence ministers will be back there to take the talks further. The goal is to have a set of proposals agreed by the time of the next summit in December.
Most of the ideas are fairly old ones to enhance co-operation between the armed forces of willing EU members; they are being dusted off to meet the new mood of anxiety. The...Continue reading
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