Originally Posted by
SaulGoodman
just to clarify: an EU Army as a single entity is decades away, if it ever happens. But at the moment there are 27 different islands all going at it alone varying from medium level (France) to piss poor (Malta) all with different equipment and different procedures. Where is the problem of aligning the 27 militaries.
Why negotiate the procurement of equipment separately to end up with a mixed bag of equipment? The MRTT fleet is a small example of how it could work.
At the moment the EU is a “superpower” and single entity when it comes to trading and regulations, but military wise it can’t act together at the moment. I also don’t see why NATO and an “EU Military Alliance” can’t exist in paralel.
You state an EU Army is decades away,
The Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) is the part of the European Union's (EU) security and defence policy (CSDP) in which 25 of the 27 national armed forces pursue structural integration. Based on Article 42.6 and Protocol 10 of the Treaty on European Union, introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, PESCO was first initiated in 2017.[1] The initial integration within the PESCO format is a number of projects which launched in 2018.[2]
Together with the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), the European Defence Fund and the Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) it forms a new comprehensive defence package for the EU.[1]
PESCO is similar to enhanced co-operation in other policy areas, in the sense that integration does not require that all EU member states participate.
They also have:
Command options for EU-led missions[edit]
[i]For each military mission (certain missions are also referred to as operation), the
Council nominates a dedicated OHQ. This section outlines the main options for OHQ.
[3][
page needed]Autonomous operations and missions[edit]
Established in 2017, the MPCC is the EU's first permanent OHQ and supersedes the previous EU OPCEN. At present it may run only non-executive operations, but will by the end of 2020 the MPCC will also be capable of running executive operations of up to 2500 troops (i.e. the size of one battle group).[1]
It would appear that a lot of background work has already been sorted.