Future Prospect of EU Army: European Developing Defense Mechanism and

Attempts on Detaching Away From NATO

Lucia Tamara Maharani

Department of International Relations

Faculty of Social and Political Sciences

Airlangga University

E-mail: lucia.tamara.maharani-2018@fisip.unair.ac.id

Abstract

The idea to upgrade common security and defense among the Europeans is not new to
European Union. EU has been developing a system for its defense and security policy as one
of its primary programs. The policy upgraded from time to time. But, in between the 60 years
EU has never had its own security or army forces. In terms of security, EU put its hope and
trust in NATO which was highly affected by the condition of Europe in the war era back
then. While in the current age of terror, US have faced several new challenges and lost its
control on Europe continent. This condition allows EU to explore more on its idea on
developing their very own joint forces. The idea of creating EU Army could be seen as the
improvisation of EU long-standing CSDP. Generated by France and Germany ambition, EU
is on its right momentum to establish its own army. But the road has never been easy.
Unifying 28 voices is not an easy task when all members could not perceive the idea in the
same notion. Creating a comprehensive mechanism and overcoming the ambiguity is a huge
homework for EU to get done if they are really keen to implement EU Army in the upcoming
years.

Keywords: Army, CSDP, EU, Joint Force, NATO

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European Union is becoming world’s leader in term of multinational integration. As a
supranational entity, the EU has the desire conventional nations usually have concerns in, the
security and military sector. The EU acknowledges their power in terms of political and
economic, but also lack of sense of security. As a giant actor in the international realm, EU
security is still depending on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The narration
of United States’ decreasing interest in the Europe made EU member states leaders think
twice on the idea of relying to NATO as their single powerhouse of security (Washington
Post, 2019). While US’s current president, Donald Trump criticized Germany’s low effort
and minimum spending on military sector, French President–Emmanuel Macron and German
Chancellor–Angela Markel, discussed firmly on the idea of creating EU Army for real.
What’s the problem with NATO that Europeans dearly wish to wean themselves from NATO
and US influence? The purpose of these nations to join under the alliance of NATO is
deterrence –concept of security where an attack against one member state is an attack to all,
which has already mentioned in Article 5 of NATO. Trump’s statement that the collective
security act regarding common attack and threat ‘might be temporary’ brought certain
insecurity to Europeans. Thus, they decided to plan an upgrade for their common security and
military system.

Aside from the plan of creating their very own joint military force, to some extent, the war on
terror movement by the US after 9/11 has galvanized EU strategic capability (Cornish &
Edwards, 2005). All the discourse of security and strategic development around EU,
including the issue of terrorism and WMD (weapons of mass destruction) proliferation, has
emerged ‘a veritable cottage industry’ for a coherent European security policy and strategic
culture (Cornish & Edwards, 2005). The idea of common security among the EU member is
not a fresh news. However, years ago EU has already amplified several programs to enhance
regional security through concepts and policies such as ESDP that later be changed into
CSDP. But, as the dynamic of the international realm flows, a single policy alone can’t cope
up with all the issues. Later, this paper will explain the development of EU defense policy,
continued with its relation to NATO, and whether the EU army will be applicable or not.

The Development

When talking about implementing defense policy to secure a nation –or in this term, a region,
strategic culture remain as the key concept. Cornish & Edwards (2005) would explain it as a
thread of political and institutional confidence and processes to manage and deploy military

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forces specifically. One of the major factors to successfully implement a strategic culture is
the military capability. Military capabilities are the principal means of implementing military
strategies (Major & Molling, 2010). Military strategies are the defense planning process
before actually deploying a force. Therefore, these strategies have to come with variations of
scenarios to conduct missions for peacekeeping operations, humanitarian assistance, and else.
Determining its own strategic culture is a necessary step for EU, since it’s the basis to define
the acquisition of necessary capabilities needed to be deployed in certain missions (Cornish
& Edwards, 2005). The absence of military capability in mission is just a meaningless talk.
The EU receives several critics regarding military capabilities. Some said the member states
weren’t delivering the military capabilities as promised, thus hindering EU to be a credible
actor in international security. And yet, other critics said that EU is not so weak on military
capability after all. This could be seen on how they handle crisis management with a hint of
militarization. This is where EU realized they need to put more concern into preparing
appropriate military function for the region.

December 1998 became the year of EU cooperation starting point in area of security and
defense. Conducted in the Franco-British Summit in St. Malo, the talk requested EU to set up
‘the capacity for autonomous action, backed by credible forces, the means to decide to use
them, and a readiness to do so’ (Major & Molling, 2010). Such demand comes from the
absence of specific mechanism to organize a common EU force. Lack of coordination
mechanism resulted to the bitter experience where more than 2 million European soldiers had
to suffer in 1990s Balkan War. The EU has to recognize that its member countries alone were
very ill-equipped and certainly incapable of handling crisis management alone.

This summit then leads to the establishment of the European Security and Defense Policy
(ESDP) that was first mentioned in Cologne Summit in June 1999. But the idea of collective
capability goal was agreed upon in the Helsinki Summit in December 1999. The idea came
with a set of goal called the Helsinki Headline Goal (HHG) that Major & Molling (2010) had
summed up, consists of:

1. There should be 60.000 troops ready for EU by 2003. These troops should be
available in 60 days and could remain in theatre for one year.
2. Establishing new political and military bodies within the EU Council.

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 3. Political and Security Committee (PSC) and the EU Military Committee (EUMC)
should be the bodies to decide capability development along the lines of EU defense
planning.
4. EU leaders agreed on European Capability Action Plan (ECAP) to remedy shortfalls
through acquisition or production. Yet, this still failed to assure member states
accountability on the commitment.
5. EU showed significant progress on command and control capabilities where they get
to choose their operation headquarters (OHQ). The EU was offered to use NATO
structure or another 5 OHQ that member states initiatively offered to EU.

HHG was a huge step in EU military history. Yet, this still brought dissatisfaction to the giant
two of EU –France and UK. They then initiated a development of ESDP. Year 2003 is the
year of EU significant role in attempts to maintain security. EU became operational and
deployed its first military operation –Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Major &
Molling, 2010). Although EU starts deploying its operation, they were never really into
conflictual combat due to EU famous normative approach to crisis management. The
European Security Strategy (ESS) is also first officially adopted in 2003.

The ESDP development didn’t stop there, in 2009 the EU established the Lisbon Treaty.
This Treaty merged the prior 3 pillars of EU –Euratom, Common Security and Foreign
Policy, and Justice and Home Affairs, that was first established by the Maastricht Treaty.
Ever since then ESDP transformed itself to Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP).
The history of EU security body might be a little confusing. For instance, EU first initiated
the CSFP under the 3 pillars of EU in 1992 Maastricht Treaty. Later then in 1999, EU created
ESDP from Cologne Summit and Helsinki Summit. In 2009, the most recent development is
the addition of CSDP as the operational mechanism of the pioneer idea, CSFP.

CSFP ESDP CSDP

Maastricht Treaty (1992) (1999) Lisbon Treaty (2009)

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After the establishment of CSDP and French-UK dissatisfaction on HHG, EU created the
Headline Goal 2010 (HG 2010). The HHG was aimed for Balkan wars and focused on
quantitative targets, hence the plan was concentrated around numbers, platforms, and
available capability to cope with the war. While on the other side, the HG 2010 put more
concern in crisis management and qualitative targets with its effect-based approach (Major &
Molling, 2010). HD 2010 set the EU militaries to transform into more flexible mobile forces
to easily adapt and counter new threats.

The HG 2010 aimed to deploy high-readiness forces under EU Battlegroups (BG) consisted
of multinational contributions under the same framework (Major & Molling, 2010). The EU
BG, certainly, had notably increase cooperation among the member states. Despite of its
significant progress, reforming national military forces doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a
development in European capability in the EU states. In fact, the establishment of EU BG
comes with military ambiguity in the operational matters. There is no clear and universal
standardization for the minimal criteria to participate in the common force. The ambiguity
resulted in low military effectiveness.

The other issue is, EU has never deployed any of the EU BG for real despite there were two
battlegroups have always been on stand-by since 2007 (Major & Molling, 2007). EU, and
most of its members, prefer to use the classic ad hoc force systems. That happened because
European nations are reluctant to transfer multinational ad hoc operations to a longstanding
institution. To create a relatively permanent military institution may result in blurring the
national sovereignty, which somehow had already happened since EU became a
supranational organization. It is clear then, that the main obstacle for EU to establish a
permanent military institution is lack of mechanism for capability development, the current
mechanism is too weak to enforce member states.

EU Army coexistence to NATO

The Europe continent security has always been backed up NATO for years. It is also very
clear that the presence of US is dominating the operations of NATO. With the emerging idea
of EU army, the question would run around will it be perceived as a challenge to NATO and
US in particular. If EU army has officially established, the presence of EU Army and NATO
under a coexistence situation in the continent will be a bit of a mere imaginary concept. Since
most countries are member of both entities, it’ll be hard to maintain the dual membership,

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moreover with EU having its independent force will be a much more efficient option than
running under NATO, which most of its fund came from the US too.

Good news for the idea of establishing an EU Army, US no longer see an integrated
European defense policy as a threat to NATO (Major & Molling, 2010). In fact, due to US
shifting interest to Asia, they are no longer willing to provide sufficient resources to fulfill
European countries need. Moreover, the US even perceive that the development of EU
defense force will strengthen the Atlantic Alliance, since Europeans are considered as friends
of the US and not foes. Detaching away from NATO, of course will put EU with heavier
responsibility to maintain international –or to the very least, regional peace. In terms of
decreasing NATO capability to provide means to Europe, since 2014 NATO members have
agreed to allocate 2% of their national GDP for defense (European Parliament, 2019). This
commitment has to be reached in 2024. Unfortunately, in 2018, only six European countries
put their words into action to give in 2% of their GDP, those are Greece, UK, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, and Estonia. The European Parliament (2010) data shows that EU
countries are the second largest defense and security spender in the world. Yet, the EU
countries still wasted billions euro ineffectively due to overcapacity, duplication, and
procurement constraint. This shows that even if EU countries decided to build its own army
and retreat from NATO, they have adequate budget capability to operate.

The EU Army Grand Idea

EU is a giant supranational entity that its members expect it to not only guarantee their wealth
but also common security and peace in the region. A special Eurobarometer on security and
defense shows that 75% respondents were in favor for common EU defense and security
policy, while 55% were in favor for EU Army in 2017 (European Parliament, 2019). Not only
the people, the EU countries leaders are sharply looking into it. They acknowledge that no
single country can tackle the modern threats single-handedly. French President Macron and
German Chancellor Merkel are the two most outstanding figures in promoting common joint
military projects.

France holds a prominent position in terms of security, not only within Europeans but also in
NATO. France owned well-developed arms industry and independently deploys its troops to
missions (Foreign Policy, 2019). France has notable track of missions and is one of the most
active troops internationally. It’s not surprise that France is one of the pioneers for the EU

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Army idea joined with Germany. France works as the muscle while Germany cast the
funding. Although it sounds like a dream team already, a solo fact should not be denied is, the
implementation of EU Army is up to unanimous vote of 28 countries to agree on the matter
of war and peace. Not all 28 countries think alike each other. Some see EU as mere economic
project, some as political integration, some even only perceive it as a platform of cooperation.
The British is one of those who sees EU mainly for its economic integration only and might
veto the establishment of EU Army. Even if Brexit will happen and diminish the idea of UK
vetoing the bill, there are still possibilities that any other countries such as Poland and
Hungary would veto too. The obscurity of how operations will be conducted brings
consideration to each member states. Every country would avoid to be deployed in the
frontier and race to be the one to provide technical support from distance.

The intricacy of establishing an efficient and effective EU Army is not a surprise. After all
these years, EU was well known for its civil approach in crisis management (Ioannides,
2010). Being used to the culture of ‘using non-military personnel in solving a crisis to prevent
escalation’ to ‘creating common forces to secure all’ is a huge shift. The use of civilian crisis
management has been included long in the European Security Strategy (ESS). Civilian
capabilities has always deemed as vital for a negotiation to success, and this require a
complementary art work between military and civilian. Thus, the culture of European crisis
management is more of a synergy than strategy (Ioannides, 2010).

Future Possibility of EU Army

The idea of creating EU Army is very tempting yet there are still a long road and ways to get
through. It will not be easy but not impossible as well. If EU is really keen to establish its
own army, there are several things they have to really improve on, both practical and
essential of the army. Practically, EU has a lot to do with determining its mechanism for a
joint force. There are still numbers of ambiguity including the principles and basic criteria to
join the force and deploy national troops (Major & Molling, 2010). If such principles aren’t
set firmly, the EU Army will suffer from lack of defense planning and strategy development.
This will end up to member states’ reluctant to give in with the commitment.

Essentially, the EU should also define what kind of actor they will be. Whether EU will still
live up to its civilian approach or become a full force joint military project. This matter
should come with defining and understanding common political visions and strategic

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objectives to reach. Determining what kind of actor EU army will be doesn’t only work for
the implementation and deployment but also to hold all members accountable with its
commitment. The biggest issue of creating EU Army has always been whether it will dimish
national sovereignty or not. Major & Molling (2010) argued that to preserve sovereignty each
actors should understand the capacity to act and enhance a reciprocal cooperation and
integration. Thus, nations should still be able to achieve its national objectives and be
independence without being fully dependent on EU Army. That way, nations would be
convinced to be in the force and hold its commitment.

References:

Cornish, Paul and Geoffrey Edwards. 2005. “The Strategic Culture of the European Union: A
Progress Report”. International Affairs ed. 81

European Parliament. 2019. Defence: Is the EU Creating a European Army?. Published on

June 24th 2019 accessed in
europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/security/20190612STO54310/eu-army-myth-
what-is-europe-really-doing-to-boost-defence

Ibrahim, Azeem. 2019. “Europe is Ready for Its Own Army” in Foreign Policy. Published on
September 5th 2019 accessed in https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/05/europe-is-
ready-for-its-own-army/

Ioannides, Isabelle. 2010. “EU Civilian capabilities and Cooperation with the Military
Sector” in Ettore Greco, Nicoletta Pirozzi, and Stefano Silvestri. 2010. EU Crisis
Management: Institutions and Capabilities in the Making (ed.)

Kluth, Andreas. 2019. “A European Army? It’ll Never Happen.”, Washington Post.
Published on December 3rd 2019, accessed in
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/a-european-army-itll-never-
happen/2019/12/02/75fd3db4-14d1-11ea-80d6-d0ca7007273f_story.html

Major, Claudia and Christian Molling. 2010. “EU Military Capabilities –Some European
Troops, but Not Yet a European Army” in Ettore Greco, Nicoletta Pirozzi, and
Stefano Silvestri. 2010. EU Crisis Management: Institutions and Capabilities in the
Making (ed.)