A Common European Army

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Proposal for a petition to the European Parliament

A. given that the United States, beginning with the Obama administration and accelerating under the Trump administration, has favored a progressive disengagement from Europe, the need for the European Union to establish credible instruments of self-defense is every more pressing;

B. given that an autonomous system of European defense in no way interferes with many member states simultaneously belonging to NATO; in any case, the principle of Atlantic solidarity is no longer in a position to safeguard European security on its own in a strategic framework that has ceased being dominated by two massive blocs, as it was during the Cold War, but is marked rather by their gradual, and problematic, disintegration;

C. given that the existence of twenty-seven national armies and numerous national military industries carries with it considerable additional financial costs, as well as significant problems regarding operational integration;

D. given that, as the interventions in Libya and Syria amply demonstrated, no member country of the European Union is in a position any longer to conduct and complete medium intensity military actions on its own;

E. given the high risks of further destabilization in the North African-Sahel regions and the Middle East, and the significant migratory pressure that destabilization runs the risk of causing;

F. given that deeply anti-liberal regimes, swept by strong nationalistic feelings and imperialistic resurgence, are forming on the borders of the European Union;

G. given that European military experiments with integration have not been particularly successful, due in large part to persistent ties between the various « parts » and their respective national governments;

H. given that national military industries currently constitute one of the main obstacles to the creation of a European army;

I. given that a plan for a European army must be sufficiently ambitious, even in terms of financial implications, to represent a strong incentive for consolidating national military industries within European groups;

J. given that a plan for European integration with regard to defense and security can neither begin with nor grow out of creating a single European army but of establishing the initial nucleus of a common army, under the authority of European institutions, to deal with emergencies and work alongside national armies in the common defense of Europe;

K. given that Reinforced Cooperation can be institutionally invoked to this end, as stated in article 20 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU);

1. we ask the European Parliament to invite the Commission to create a working group composed of people with recognized abilities in the military and political sectors, two for each of the four EU institutions (the Commission, the European Council, the Council and the Parliament) and two for each member state of the EU that is ready to commit to a Europe-wide plan for military integration through the creation of a common army;
2. we ask the European Parliament to invite the Commission to charge this group of people:

– with drafting a white paper on the security and defense of the EU that analyzes all threats that the European Union as a whole is exposed to and against which as a whole it must be able to defend itself;

– with conducting a detailed study of the viability of a plan for a common European army, taking into account the following criteria:

a) the complete institutional and political integration of such an army into the EU’s existing institutions; in this instance, the European Council should act as the High Council for the Security of the European Union, with the power, on a proposal from the President of the Commission, to authorize the deployment of the common army;
b) the exclusion of the option of merely coordinating segments of national armies, or again of integrating them along solely functional lines, in favor of the option of creating a common European army from the ground up that is comprised of European soldiers and officers;
c) a preliminary allocation equal to 0.3% of the combined GDP of the countries participating in this Reinforced Cooperation.

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