Naval History Forums

From my reading, any armed forces assigned to the EU by a member country are only assigned on a voluntary basis. This the EU never does anything militararily anyway, why assign any forces to it. I don't even see the French standing for other nations telling them what ships they may or may not have...
Ted

This is the current arrangement, however as the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect, giving the EU a president (appointed and not elected) a foreign policy and armed forces then an EU defence force will emerge. All voluntary of course, in that the politicians of the EU and its member countries all support it because it is in their own interests to do so. Ordinary members of the public and voters will get no say in this, until they vote for parties that oppose the EU.

RF wrote:This is the current arrangement, however as the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect, giving the EU a president (appointed and not elected) a foreign policy and armed forces then an EU defence force will emerge. All voluntary of course, in that the politicians of the EU and its member countries all support it because it is in their own interests to do so. Ordinary members of the public and voters will get no say in this, until they vote for parties that oppose the EU.

They don't have to oppose the EU, do they? Just the Lisbon Treaty?

I still do not see a British Government, especially a new British Government, going for this in terms of anything beyond some token force. It is one of the many dreams/nightmares of EU beaurocrats. No major member state will support it beyond token terms and cannot, since the member states do not have -and cannot have- joint policy, since they mostly have such very different national interests and, most of them spend next to nothing on defence.
Ted