Belgium supports the creation of a European Army (survey)

https://i.redd.it/g523kic68c0f1.jpeg

by EUstrongerthanUS

49 comments

  2. Makes sense when your army stands at 25,000 personnel.

  3. EU army sounds good in theory but would be bureaucratic nightmare in practice.

  4. belgium has nothing to loose and everything to gain makes sense, although i agree

  5. Yeah, now ask this from countries bordering Russia and whether they are willing to give up their national militaries for it…

  6. Makes sense for us.
    Its not like our army could fight off a foreign power on our own.
    Unless its luxembourg trying to invade,i think we might have a chance then.

  7. Let’s bring back proper labels on charts. This one has 3 percentages that don’t even add up to 100%. And 4 sectors on the actual chart that aren’t labeled well. I’m all for sexy infographic and this one looses some clarity points in my book.

  8. Belgium was created because the British didn’t want France or the Netherlands to be strong.

  9. Belgium wants a EU military as long as someone else pays for it and someone else mans it would be a more accurate headline.

  10. Yeah I bet they do. Another lavishly appointed HQ to be based in Brussels as well, no doubt. 

  12. they also coincidentally prepared a tender to supply beer to said big army

  13. Glorious idea, keep fucking with other peoples balls. Tried and tested way of doing things

  14. My opinion, for a Belgian myself. Logistically, instead of being a small part with different materials and protocols it would be better to have a larger unified system and just fund that(money and personal).

    If Anny neighbouring country would wanne take Belgium, they just be able to. Even if you would max the Belgium army.

  15. It wouldn’t ever work.

    There would be some odd veto system implemented, and then certain countries would veto the use of the army because they are under the thumb of the enemy that it plans to be deployed against, or for some reason like unless they get fishing rights completely unrelated to the task at hand…

  16. Who would be against when someone else is going to defend you while your army is heading home Friday after lunch?

  19. I don’t think this is the best example, Belgium has nothing to lose by a European army

  20. I wonder if the main reason for it is a usual “if it’s “common” someone else would pay for it, not me” mindset?
    I saw a polls about Ukraine support with the same results about a months ago i believe: 80% thinks it need more support, 10% thinks their country should support Ukraine more.

  21. They can’t still be talking about NATO, the idiot in the Whitehouse has surely killed that .

  22. Is this hypothetical EU army gonna include the whole of Europe or just EU members?

  24. i’m confused as to why a nato army has such low percentage. wouldn’t a NATO army make more sense? Not only in strength but it’s already a defence organisation, while the EU isn’t.

  25. First start paying 2% of your GDP for military as agreed and have quick reaction forces ready to be deployed at any minute, then we can even think about starting such conversation. War in Europe for 3 years now and there are countries(1.3% Belgium) that still did not reach this MINIMUM threshold.

    Why European army can’t and won’t happen is the fact that none of the strongest EU armed forces want to give up their independence when it comes to making key decisions. Can’t imagine a situation where Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria or Slovenia(all way below 2%) have any say when it comes to what happens with my countries(Poland) military forces. It’s absurd.

  28. I am all for a common European army honestly. In fact the German-Dutch mixed 414 tank battalion is in my eyes a step that demonstrates it can be done.
    As someone in the reserves, I will fight and risk life and limb for both my countrymen and that of my fellow Europeans if called upon, but of course I hope that day never comes.

  29. Main issue with European army is that there is no consensus as to what that word even means.

    Might be you have a room full of people agreeing that it’s needed, but each one means something completely different.

    Is a European army a replacement of the national army’s?

    Is an additional army?

    Is it something like Nato just on European level that is more in the background a bit organizing a common structure.

    Is it an EU body pulled over the national army’s that in case of need can pull parts of the national army’s under it’s command.

    Is it just more integration between the national army’s but alL competences stay as they are?

    Who controls it? The EU parliament?
    The National country’s with a Veto?

    Who finances it? Who gets to decide what weapons are bought and where they will be produced?

    I hope at least something will really come out of it

  30. For how an unified EU army would look, look at Austria-Hungary and how it worked out for them.
    [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Hungarian_Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Hungarian_Army)

    especially this:

    >The Austro-Hungarian Empire often suffered from a lack of military interpreters, and this proved to be a major force in the partial dysfunctioning and blunders of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Nearly all officers of the upper ranks spoke German (specifically Austrian German), and because only a fraction of soldiers spoke German, this produced a logistical obstacle for organizing the military. Likewise the lack of mutual intelligibility between speakers of Hungarian and German led to a feeling of resentment by many non-Austrian soldiers. The delivery of orders was particularly ineffective, and the bureaucratic and dysfunctional system led to individual ethnic units becoming isolated from the overall high command.

    >This in turn led to ethnic tensions and political violence in the empire, as such language battalions began instigating mutinies and revolts against the Austrian commanders, whom they saw as out of touch. Desertions and revolts were most common amongst Slavic battalions, particularly the Czech-Slovakian battalions; however, all battalions during the war suffered from these logistical challenges. The battalions’ use of languages that were not understood by the Austrian commanders also led to it being extremely difficult to impossible to discover attempts at desertion or revolt.

    I don’t see a world where this exact issue would not reappear in an EU-wide army.

  32. The question suggests that with a national army, only the national would be used, and only with a nato/eu army, nato/eu countrys would help in the defense. Someone with no opinion is going to click eu-army

  33. Belgium has to fulfill the minimum Nato-spending first.
    An EU Army is a great idea.

  35. Being in NATO doesn’t make much sense when the two most populous countries are the USA and Turkey. The first is ruled by an oligarch which threatens to invade other NATO members. The second is an unreliable autocracy which is currently occupying part of an EU country.

    An EU army with some non-EU friendly nations like the UK or Canada is what makes more sense.

  36. countries supporting an EU army are usually the ones that dont want an own army and are not willing to invest into it. Its basically pushing the problem from a national level to an EU level.

    next time ask them if they would be willing to fight for an EU army and the poll would look very different

  37. The only problem is that… well… look at Austro-Hungary during WW1. English could probably help as a Lingua Franca though.

  38. Yay, let’s gooo! This is one of the main things to fix right now.

    A single command structure to protect all legitimate interest of the members states, while not needing all 27 of them to agree all the time on how to move forward. It would also save a massive amount of money and streamline procurement, training and so on.

  39. Bruh probably whole Belgium would be conquered before EU army unanimously agree on something

  41. I wouldn’t trust a Frenchman or a German with my bicycle, let alone the safety of my country.

  42. There should have been a Federal Europe with a military and common defence and foreign policy decades ago. Too many people are naïve with respect to Russia, or well meaning pacifist types, and are still deluding themselves even after the recent American behaviour regarding Ukraine (and trade wars too). There are also too many Russian apologists, sympathizers and bots on this forum (sowing division). Europe should be unified: politically, economically and militarily, and not be bullied by the US, China or Moscow.

  43. Based Belgium.
    Austrians meanwhile are fucking stupid and believe their neutrality will save them.

  44. From a Belgium (and most other western Europe countries) perspective it makes perfect sense. They will never be attacked, so there’s no need for them to have their own army. And may the countries that are in actual danger protect us if anything unnatural happens.

  45. Based upon their historical experience this seems wise

  47. Hilarious when you factor in their pathetic funding for their military.

    Just pretend to be neutral like Austria or Ireland and save yourself the embarrassment.

  48. A European Army is difficult mostly because of the politics of getting countries to agree on things, as well as supply chains, and manufacture. We have seen issues with countries wanting to get more economically out of a contract than other nations involved etc e.g. Eurofighter and Germany.

    Effective decision-making militarily can’t be egalitarian in nature sometimes some countries and people make are just better than other parts and strategies.

    The only things we have great quality for are ofcourse the size of the Army we can produce and Quality of gear and the general expertise and experience/tactics we have in some nations already.

  49. You might as well merge all the countries in the EU at that point.

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