Luc Frieden joins call for a European army. The Luxembourg prime minister also said he wants a permanent seat for the EU on the UN Security Council
https://www.luxtimes.lu/europeanunion/luc-frieden-joins-call-for-a-european-army/25452778.html
by EUstrongerthanUS
40 comments
Yes, it’s now or never for the European army. You can’t trust Trump to help you out against Putin.
It’s time to move away from the US. They will become an enemy soon I’m afraid under trump. We have to look after ourselves.
How about Luxembourg get its act together and spend money on collective defense?
It’s time. The USA have proven to be an unreliable ally for europe ones more.
European leaders are going to have to wake up and smell the coffee. The USA can no longer be considered a reliable or stable global partner that shares the same desire to preserve the prosperity and security of other free and democratic nations.
There is no longer a guarantee that, if we need help, our allies will come. We need to prepare for that possibility before we lose yet another free society to Russia or China.
Good call, common foreign policy and fiscal union within eurozone should follow but that is not going to happen unless europeans develop sense of european identity or nationality in slightest sense, which is not happening now and there is not really anything on the horizon which suggests things might change.
France, Belgium, Finland, Greece are all EU countries yet they all are on polar opposities in terms of approach to military spending, foreign policy, main threats to security etc. Countries will have to give up on things and think from european perspective – is anyone even willing to do so?
Honestly. Everyone in the EU except Poland probably needs to look at their defence budget for 2025 and add about 0.3% to 1% of GDP to that number*
I wish I could make an exception for the Baltic states (their budgets are already pretty tight with the current 2.2%-3% spending), but as it is they’re going to need it unless they want Russian to be back on their mandatory education plan in the next decade.
*Except you Ireland. You need to add more.
This won’t happen unless there is a major push for a European national identity which would require a major push of nationalist sentiment a lot like the national romantic movements of many nations in the past.
If you want people to support, fight and die for the EU then you need to fill them up with patriotic ideals.
From January, Europe can’t trust the US anymore. We need to stick our heads together and get cracking.
A Putin asset has been elected into the white house along with all his cronies.
These are dark times.
France could hypothetically give its permanent seat to the EU, which is not that insane to think of, especially when France has already proposed extending its Nuclear Umbrella, and “sharing” them (with very big quotation marks) with Germany.
Naturally France would want something out of this, which would be the EU to actually move its ass and start doing what France has been suggesting for the last decades, which is becoming more autonomous and self reliant in matters of defense industry, military, and energy.
Wishful thinking for the UN Security council. Russia would almost certainly veto. USA and China are likely to aswell.
Europe has to get its shit together right now
It’s funny, a statesman of a country with less then 1000 active military personnel drops this and bigger players just play in the sand and wait for a miracle.
EU will need an army. With Trump winning, the days of NATO are numbered and EU will lack a way to defend itself.
Over the past few years we have seen that the UN is useless.
Fuck the UN. Complete waste of time and money. Better use the money to reach EU targets.
France especially needs smaller tactical nukes now, atm the only have the really big stuff, where putin knows they wont use it. We need some detterence, so we stay save against Putin without the Us
Before that we need to remove the enemies from within like Hungary
IMO we have enough military force to counter Russian aggression. We already have perfectly decent alliances with countries from all over the world not just Europe. Alliances come and go. They are flexible which is what you need to counter ever changing threats.
More money needs to be spent in securing civilian infrastructure. That’s what Russia is going after. Damaging this does real harm to our economies and thus longer term spending. Russia is massively weakened and wouldn’t be capable of a wider European invasion but can cause huge problems with relatively simple methods.
So more money to intelligence agencies and multi country cooperation. Not just EU countries. We must find and smash all of Russia’s cells. Not wasting time on some fantasy army that will probably take decades to form and will probably fall apart at the first sign of conflict due to disagreements.
Why is europe always being reactive instead of proactive? They should have done this back in 2014 already when Russia again showed it’s true colors, and latest 2016 when USA showed itself to not be 100% reliable. Last part wouldn’t matter, we should never have outsourced our own protection
It’s hilarious how so many people act surprised that Trump won. This election was already lost months ago, when Biden remained adamant about running, whilst behaving like a senile old man. When he presented Zelenski as Putin… or read from the teleprompter “and now smile and say goodbye”… that’s stuff Americans care about – the USA is a SHOW. If you fuck up the delivery and the show becomes a charade, that’s joever. And then – to put the cherry on top – Harris came in, with one argument: “I’m not Trump – but a black woman”. That’s not how you win an election.
Harris was never voted for as a candidate, she was – as Trump always loudly screamed – “set” by the “establishment”. Without the “will” of the American voters.
The fact that most of reddit acted as an echo chamber (Harris super, Trump evil) only acts to solidify this, e.g. pics which should rather be called dempropaganda bombared every main page with random pictures of random people, but with some sort of anti-trump message – 100k upvotes in an hour. The pure bot hell.
There are three major topics right now that the Americans care about
a) inflation, which has hit especially the poor
b) world politics, incl. Putin going crazy
c) “the woke”*
c*) it’s not important whether c) actually has any impact on US life, it’s about PERCEIVED damage. And the republicans were very good in blaming “woke” for every current problem in the US.
And in each of these three topics do the majority of Americans put Trump more likely than Harris to “fix” these “issues”.
This election is not a surprise, but it should be a wake up call.
Well… most of EU members buy american’s weapons anyway.
It is a bit late to think about it now.
I hate Macron, i didn’t vote for him but he was right all along, but France is so lonely on this one….
We need nukes and a lot of them. They are the best plan B defense now we cant rely in the US anymore.
Remember who you’re voting for in Europe. If you want peace and unity, don’t vote for your local wannabe dictator. Fuck Orban, Wilders, Le Pen and that Slovak fuck. They’ll talk about migrants and do everything to make sure migrants are off as bad as possible to make sure they’re the enemy. If you want peace and prosperity, buy Europe, develop in Europe, produce in Europe and make sure we build a nice stick towards Russia/NK/China.
So if luxembourg provides 5 people it’s like 10% of their population
Is the Security Council even worth much anymore?
Perhaps while he’s at it, he could also stop Luxembourg being the tax evasion cesspit of Europe?
If countries had tax revenues to pay for services, maybe things would get funded.
Agree. Time for European countries to form into an phalanx and then give ultimatums to guys like Orban: Step in line or GTFO.
We need to leave empty high minded rhetoric and lofty ideals with no basis in reality behind and start be to intolerant towards the intolerant
The world is changing for the worse again and we have a lot to catch up on
I 100% want a European Army, but I see too many countries are still too worried about their sovereignty to go there.
I was thinking that maybe as a step in the right direction could be to create a European Logistics Division that does both Military and Civilian (Emergency and disaster relief) logistics.
– Backbone logistics operations on land, sea and in the air. The scale can help both on cost and availability. It can also be a leverage to speed up the road, rail and port infrastructure development needed to quickly transport troops equipment across the EU.
– As this leaves all the kinetic capability with the countries I think they may be less worried about sovereignty.
– The civilian aspect may make it more palatable specially as disasters become more frequent and impactful.
– This could be a good learning experience towards a European Army.
Just a thought.
“In the European Union (EU), **enhanced cooperation** (previously known as closer cooperation) is a procedure where a minimum of nine EU member states are allowed to establish advanced integration or cooperation in an area within EU structures but without the other member states being involved.”
I think an EU military being founded via enhanced cooperation is the best path forward. This is similar to PESCO, another EU defense initiative.
The EU is not going to get a seat at the UN Security Council unless France _truly_ believes in Europe enough to essentially give up its seat for the Bloc.
Ball really is in Macron’s court here. Even if they have a two-tier solution, such as splitting the seat into France + EU but France gets the final say.
As long as there is no EU foreign policy, that amounts to very little. An army is a tool, not an end.
It’s necessary. A European Federation too tbh.
Europe cannot rely on the US anymore. We need a strong EU, we need a united army, we need an independant economy. We need to kick out the countries that are allied with Putin and reinforce our ties with our allies that are working in a democracy still.
So, again, for the nth time, why was France not listened to?
Europe needs to finally wake up. Its now or never. 🇪🇺
And treat the traitors of Europe like Viktor Orbán, accordingly. The people whom selling out EU security for personal gain don’t deserve vote
Lux is spending 1% of GDP on defense. Put your wallet where your mouth is.
You’re gonna need one. America cannot be trusted.
We need information warfare too. We only defend and run after the facts. We need to attack and get ahead
An army that can never decide what to do? Meh. We need some reforms first.
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