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Relaunching the European Defense is urgent

Against a background of serious international tension and the pressure of terrorist movements, the strengthening of European military capabilities seems essential. The idea of a European army goes back to the failed project of a European Defense Community in 1954. Now is the time to relaunch the idea of a European standing army. There is clear evidence of US military disengagement from Europe and the functioning of the NATO is often, and rightly so, criticized. It must also be emphasized that troops in the current context of insecurity are more and more involved in internal security missions. However, the essential mission of the Army is to respond to external threats. Obviously, we live at a time marked by deteriorating security in our neighborhood, both East and South. Despite this very challenging environment, the European authorities are unable to bring forward this idea of a European army. The unanimous agreement of all 28 member states remains out of reach for the moment: the UK rejects this idea, France has no clear position on this question, Germany welcomes this step, and the Eastern European countries prefer to strengthen NATO's capabilities. As a result, presently the UK, France, Germany and Italy together have a smaller number of regular combat bataillons than West-Germany in 1990 (Fig.IISS 2015). And because of its lack of integration in defense, the EU-28 member states use 154 different types of weapon, where the US uses 9 types! (Report J.Solana Feb.2015). And even more significant, the combined military spending of EU countries over the past 10 years has decreased by 9%. Today the Common Security and Defense Policy set out in the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 is no longer in step with the current international situation. And yet, the idea of a single European army would probably be supported by a majority of European citizens.

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