Should Europe build a common army?

With European security under unprecedented pressure, the long-debated idea of a joint EU corps is no longer an abstract idea.

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European countries are currently under unprecedented pressure to rethink their defence and security capabilities.

A shift in mindset

As we know, Europe has long relied on NATO for security. Yet this pillar of the continent’s stability is crumbling as the US commitment to the transatlantic alliance wanes. Europe is being forced into a total change of mindset, explains Michele Bellini, a political analyst specialising in European affairs.

Michele Bellini, Political analyst specializing in European issues, Interview by Giulia Cannizzaro, Radio 24 (in Italian)

“Today, Europe is paying a heavy price for its dependencies, and those in the field of defence and security are certainly among the most significant and most worrying. To address them, we first need a change of mindset. We must rediscover a strategic mindset because, with the end of the Cold War, the peace dividend led Europeans to effectively dismiss the possibility of war. Since we are peaceful and wish to live by common rules in a peaceful world, we took it for granted that others would do the same. Unfortunately, history has proved us wrong. So, regaining a strategic mindset means, first and foremost, contemplating the possibility of wars, and as such being better equipped to prevent them.”

Let’s briefly reflect on the European bloc’s stance on military and security matters – where we have come from, and where we are heading. Following France’s 1954 rejection of the European Defence Community owing to its supranational structure, defence and security were excluded from the Union’s early treaties. With defence already embedded within NATO, EU member states decided to focus their efforts on economic integration.

Defence provisions have been added to the treaties little by little, on an intergovernmental basis, carefully avoiding any sense of loss of national sovereignty. Since the 1990s, EU defence has evolved from basic policy coordination and crisis management into deeper integration, with US political uncertainty in 2017 triggering the launch of joint funding and structured military cooperation. Then came Russia’s war of aggression, a key catalyst for reinforcing Brussels’ role as a coordinator and facilitator in defence matters. The EU even agreed to directly fund lethal military aid for Ukraine.

As global political uncertainty deepens, the possibility of military conscription is back on the political agenda in a number of member states. For the time being, though, national governments are shying away from the idea of a unified ‘EU army’ under central command.

The case for one corps

But, according to a European Movement survey, Europe’s citizens may be more supportive of a common army than their hesitant leaders, explains Hervé Moritz, president of the European Movement in France.

Hervé Moritz, President of the European Movement – France, Interview by Charlotte Baechler, euRadio (in French)

“We conducted this survey across several European countries to show the popular support among the European public for the idea of a common European defence and even that of a common army. In this survey, 56 per cent of respondents were in favour of establishing a European army. We also conducted this survey to show just how widespread this view is among Europeans, despite the fears – or at least the hesitations – of our leaders. Europeans are somewhat more motivated than their leaders to achieve this common defence. The aim is to show leaders – MEPs and heads of state and government – that the time has come to move forward on this European defence.”

And why does he think this is?

Hervé Moritz, President of the European Movement – France, Interview by Charlotte Baechler, euRadio (in French)

“Today we are in an international context where Europeans are concerned about the situation both in Europe and in the world, with the international order being challenged by a number of major world powers. And, of course, there is the ongoing war in Ukraine, which shows that war has returned to the European continent and that our peaceful European project cannot, under any circumstances, guarantee peace at the borders of the European Union today. We must therefore build this peace; we must find a way to build this European security architecture. To do so, we need to have a credible common defence.”

Moritz believes such a project even makes economic sense.

Hervé Moritz, President of the European Movement – France, Interview by Charlotte Baechler, euradio (in French)

“Europeans are paying twice, because they are paying once to strengthen their national armies – every country is seeing a renewed investment in defence budgets, which sometimes requires choices impacting on social budgets or education budgets, for example, which in my opinion is not a good thing. And we are paying twice because these national armies are quite disparate, with very different equipment, and they do not train together, so they have different strategic cultures, and so on. We have to pay a second time to promote coordination between these national armies.”

Unnecessary duplication?

However, Mihaela Natea, director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in European Security and Countering Disinformation at Romania’s UMFST University, disagrees.

Mihaela Natea, Associate professor at UMFST of of Târgu Mureș, Director of the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence in European Security and Countering Disinformation, Interview by Sorin Şchiopu, Radio România (in Romanian)

“But isn’t that redundant? Europe has every opportunity to assert itself within NATO and play a significant role there. The fact that Europe hasn’t invested enough time in this is evidence of a problem in our approach to European security. We’ve found ourselves facing a large-scale war on the EU’s borders, and have realised that history is repeating itself and we are not prepared. So there’s a problem with the approach to and implementation of security policies at the European level. How realistic are they in light of what is happening right now?”

Yet EU defence chief Andrius Kubilius stressed during a recent Euranet Plus debate that the intention was not to duplicate efforts, but rather to be prepared to replace US troops should the White House decide to pull them out of Europe.

Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for Defence and Space (in English)

“If Americans start to remove those troops from the European continent, then we need to look also at how to replace them. And that is where it comes to this idea, or one of the possible solutions that we need to create a similar type of military force, a European military force, which could play a similar role. And that role is to be something like a rapid reaction force. […] We can call that a European army; we can call that a European rapid reaction force… but what we need to understand is that this is not a replacement of national European armies: it’s a replacement of the American troops which are now located on the European continent.”

In June, EU leaders confirmed that EU defence readiness must be significantly strengthened by 2030. They also called for an agreement on the military mobility proposal by the end of 2026, which would entail removing obstacles to military mobility in all their forms — regulatory, infrastructural, and capability-related — to ensure the smooth movement of troops across the bloc, among other things.

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• Hermine Donceel, Euranet Plus News Agency