Ah but they’re not calling it a European Army. It’ will just be all countries paying into a central defence budget and then the EU directing the member states’ armies. Completely different.
I’m sure the contributions will be remarkably reasonable too.
Moghereini did stress that there will also be much more co-operation in research and development so maybe the EU will be looking to sell newer, better weapons to help with the funding.
However it works, Im sure we can all agree that what the world needs is more weapons and more meddling in the affairs of a greater number of countries.
Well, I did warn our Remaining friends about this. During the 2012 debate between Farage and Clegg, Ol Nick repeatedly called Nigel a fantasist for suggesting it.
The huge question of course, is who this force would hold fealty to.
No remainers here, because well, a single EU wide defence force and budget has been part of the long term vision of the EU for some time. It ultimately, makes a lot of sense unless you are a little englander. Our current Uk defense budget is around 40 bn per year… if we could half that by having a single EU defence force that our contribution was say 20 bn, why we could use that extra 20bn per year on the NHS … an extra 13% would come in handy surely?
We’ll also be cut out of all their defence contracts I suspect. As I understand, this will involve working on new military hardware in a joint cooperation between the EU members. How much of that business will our defence contractors see? Ah well, we can just sell more stuff to nice countries like Saudi Arabia, with their excellent human rights record.