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A European Union Army: Objective or Chimera? - June 30 2017

The proposal for a pan-European defence force has been in the public domain for quite some time. As early as 1950, Winston Churchill, the then British Prime Minister, had for the first time proposed a ‘European Army subject to proper European democratic control’. This did not fructify owing to opposition from France. Recently, in March 2017, the European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker spoke favourably about a European Union Army (EUA), inter alia, recommending the need for support structures, in the context of obtaining greater integration within the European Union (EU) on defence and security matters. However, Juncker has also struck an ambivalent note by mentioning that ‘a EUA is not a project [to be immediately pursued] for the future`. [...]