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Fuck Politico, Axel Springer and Döpfner. Don’t share, don’t click.
I like the idea, but if you think about it, it would take a major EU reform to work. In the current state with every country having its own veto an European army will not be able to be deployed anywhere. We had this one with Hungary being a Russian puppet under Orban. We didn’t manage to provide normal aid to Ukraine due to Orbans veto. An European army would face the same problems.
I mean if it gets implemented it will get the duty to actually like… you know defend its own member states. There would be no coordination or possibility to veto in this case. A veto could only be a problem if we tried to send the EU army somewhere outside of the member states and have them take on a mission there
Would it defend every state? Or would the big countries make concessions to avoid a military conflict? With or without a veto right.
By the way EU already had a mutual defense pact. A single military would increase effectiveness but remove member’s state ability to defend themselves.
If the treaty says the military would react to any attack of a member stack with duty to defend all, the countries wouldn’t get to vote on it. Only for outward missions this would be needed
If a military attack is not negotiated away as I mentioned.
Just set it up like the US was meant to be set up, a weak federal government that is in charge of defense of the whole, interstate commerce, and foreign relations.
Just don’t whatever you do let it start an income tax, that is where it really went sideways here. Well, that and the slavery thing.
The US wasn’t supposed to have a standing army.
No, just militias, and a dedicated officer core in case they are needed, which we have had from the start in West Point, Senators get their patron’s kids in there as favours usually. Not until WWI do I think there was a standing army of the federal government. Let alone federal law enforcement.
Agree. Fuck the veto system. It should be 60% democratic parlamentary votes as standard. Some times it could be 50% to win the vote. Just anything else than the veto system. But I understand then you go past the union and for federalisation.
Also, I think no countries should be allowed to leave the EU once they’re in.
Do you want to join? Good. Bur that’s forever.
We can’t have another Russia-fueled Brexit shit show again.
This could backfire. Just because a democratic government joined the EU last year, does not mean it will still be a democratic government after the next election cycle.
If you federalize there is no leaving since you share some parts of same governed country. But there should always be place for talks. It’s not impossible for a state in the USA or a province in Canada to go solo, but it is damn hard and requires a lot of paperwork. Also, you would need a system where you can’t just leave after you profitted hugely on the federation, and once your economy booms, then leaves. Atleast it should be like a divorce where we estimate how much it will cost for that state to deattache itself from the rest of the Federation. Pay back what you’ve gained from joining.
It is not possible for a part of the US to leave the US in fact, there was a whole thing about it.
It is possible, but it is crazy difficult.
It’s theoretically possible but I think it would require a constitutional amendment, either to exclude the state or define a process. The unilateral secession question was definitely settled in the civil war.
Not really. It can established as its own thing or semi-detached with its ioewn rules of deployment. opennfor every member state but when ooted kn, without veto power in case of defence against aggression for example. Sonething like an EU-NATO would be not a bit more problematic than NATO. While a NATO style system has its limitations too, it would be already a big upgrade over what we have now.
Kind of depends on how you set up the command structure, doesn’t it? I’m sure clever people in the EU could figure out a way to avoid being held hostage by a bad actor.
That’s the neat thing about this: Since establishing the command structure requires everyone to agree, the bad actors can simply block everything until they get what they want. There’s no way that they would agree to such a command structure which avoids them
But an EU army wouldnt be set up without automatic response/duty to protect member states would it?
Maybe? Vetoing spends political capital.
But I agree that getting an EU army is not an easy task.
Yes, it’s impossible to get every country to agree on something like this. We can’t even agree on simple topics, and even if we did, there’d be nothing to stop future governments from acting differently.
The whole concept of the EU needs to be reworked so that it has a central government with greater authority over its member countries.
Ideas like this are exactly why the UK left though. Noone wants to be forced into something the don’t want to do, particularly wars.
Obviously, but we can’t have a unified army or defence force without it. Countries close to a conflict will want to use the army to defend their people, while those further away will try to prevent their people from being involved.
Neither is wrong, because we are not a federation and our individual countries are still more important than the union as a whole.
it would take a major EU reform to work
That’s why this is bait. They need a central government for it which would turn the EU into another US. We don’t have a fundamentally different population that would resist propaganda and vote for useful politicians. That centralized EU government would be corrupted by the billionaires like they have corrupted the US. The EU would fight for their benefit and all democratic structures will be undermined to secure the influence for the billionaires. The national competition keeps the EU as honest as possible under current conditions.
The US was a union of independent states. The centralization of more and more power is what turned the united states into the United States.
Well yes, but that has already all come to pass, europe is proper fucked, you might just not realize it yet. The UK is first, the US second, the rest of the west isn’t far behind.
Why in that order?
Just by how things are going. The UK is worse than the US our blowhard pos leader aside. But the US will fix elections, then help the far right, the only ones running as popular (fake) reform against unpopular oligarchic stooges, across the west, get elected. Not to mention Russia, and the rest of the billionaires in on their bullshit.
It would be easy to stop, in Europe, with some popular opposition, but somehow we don’t have that seemingly anywhere. Just oligarchic stooges. France is going to fall sooner than later, idk spain, italy, germany, the netherlands, to say nothing of australia. This is a half century long shit show by the bosses to seize absolute power.
The US way anything but centralised until well into the 19th century. Yet it was able of enduring an effective common defence. In some regards the EU is more centralised than the US today. or at least less dysfunctional.
The US from the start kept an Officer Corp. Traditionally Senators could get their patrons in there, at west point.
The rest was militias and state armouries. The Union soldiers I think were recruited through the states not the federal government itself.
They did commission armies or navies for a purpose, but would disband them after, like our first engagement to pursue the barbary pirates based around Tunisia that were harrassing our shipping, not long after the revolution.
I don’t think it was until WWI that we had a standing army. Or a permanent income tax, (they started one in the civil war then ended it after the war.)
Link for those who don’t like politico: https://europediplomatic.com/2026/04/10/spain-sanchez-calls-for-european-army/
Why don’t you just post this link instead?
I did.
Where though?
👆 Right up there.
deleted by creator
Do I really have to spell it out like for a five year old?
Why did you not post the link you commented instead of the Politico-link?
Do I really have to spell it out like for a five year old?
Would be good if your comments were more nuanced and a bit more respectful every now and then. Your arguments about “Politico” holds also true for many other media outlets. It’s something others have already commented on in your post and comments. You keeps pushing your own agenda in this matter.
Most people here should be adults and are capable of making their own decision in what they read.
Why should I respectfully answer comments that aren’t respectful in the first place? Why should I answer a dad joke-level intentional “misunderstanding” with “Oh, I’m sorry”?
Your arguments about “Politico” holds also true for many other media outlets. It’s something others have already commented on in your post and comments. You keeps pushing your own agenda in this matter.
Yeah… so? Do I need to fight on all fronts simultaneously to be allowed to criticise any given corporation? Do I need to attack Danone, Mars and Kraft every time I point out Nestlé is evil?
Or do you just want me to stop pointing out Politico is ownee by an evil publisher?Most people here should be adults and are capable of making their own decision in what they read.
Yes, and to be able to do so, they need to be informed.
Because to me Politico is good enough. I did however add a second link for people with an aversion to politico, as a courtesy.
I get that you don’t like politico, but that’s not my problem. I post links that I find interesting. You don’t have to read them. You can even block me to avoid seeing any of my links. That’s fine, I don’t mind.
I strongly disagree with the idea of “Only sources that I find acceptable should be allowed”. You don’t have to agree, and nobody is stopping you from posting your own content. I won’t even complain about your sources, I promise.
I mean, I think I remember a comment of yours stating you’d only use Politico if you couldn’t find another source on a matter.
Where?
While I would love to see an EU army, I don’t think it’s realistic. Unfortunately most countries are too culturally and ideologically different, and this would never work in the long term. What would happen if an anti-EU party took control of a member country? What if one country objects to the European army being used in a specific operation?
We’ve seen countless times when an EU member has sabotaged the entire union or made specific things more difficult because, in their opinion, it would go against their country’s interests.
We are not the United States of Europe. Many older people do not share a sense of European pride, and sometimes even hate their neighbouring countries.
I mean the EU army does not need to replace national armies initially, the army could grow into it. I think long term it would make defense a lot more efficient and save budget which could be spent on improving the lives of the people or hardening defenses better.
Those are great questions, and I think, as you say, this won’t be straightforward or easy to achieve. But in the long run, the union will need some sort of shared defense framework in place, and now is a good to start discussing it.
I guess these “older people” won’t be around when this eventually becomes a reality.
Let’s hope so. Creating a better, more united Europe would be truly amazing. The whole “Country A vs Country B” mentality within our union is stupid and only makes us weaker.
This approach works in times of peace and prosperity, but when a crisis emerges, we drown in pointless discussions instead of addressing the issue.
Maybe we could have many EU brigades each composed by countries with close interests.
But NATO is not impossible? Quite some double think.
I’m much more in favour of something like NATO (just without the USA) instead of an EU army.
Would you care to explain your reasoning?
We already are compelled to defend each other by the EU articles.
They did nothing for Cyprus.
They did though… https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g74npdwnyo
That’s only one part. The other part is figuring out how to defend each other.
No, you have to hit your NATO spending first before you can have another military alliance.
Nato might blow up here, the US president is using greenland as the wedge issue to get the support to end it, and trying to increase the military budget to 1.5 trillion to make up for the lost arms sales to nato that would result, I strongly suspect.
Idk if he will succeed, but that’s their plan.
A very related but different issue. With the possibility of the US leaving NATO or even worse, turning hostile, it’s even more important that Europe gets her military in shape. And Spain is pretty much the European country that doesn’t pick up the slack right now.
I never hear of them doing anything militarily, or of selling any advanced weaponry, which is odd considering their former empire being one of the largest ever in the world and all. You hear about EADS, a consortium across france and germany and whereever, and other pan european arms, plenty of german stuff, italian, the UK.
From what I’ve heard eastern europe is less advanced stuff usually, small arms and the like.
How about no?
Well, no EU army for freeloaders!
