By Amber Bereznyckyj, History and Creative Writing student at the New College of the Humanities
On New Year’s Eve, Emmanuel Macron commenced his six month presidency of the European Union, following from Slovenia. His general aims are to create a EU minimum wage and to increase both carbon taxes and regulations on big tech. However, in the months leading up to that, Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, began to advocate the ‘need’ for an EU army in a meeting with defence ministers in Slovenia. The removal of US troops from Afghanistan meant that Borrell suggested a “rapid response force” of 5,000 soldiers in order to stabilise the situation. Additionally, with the building conflict between Ukraine and Russia; Paris and Berlin see the US, China and Russia as credible threats to the EU.
Macron’s address on the French agenda for the EU stated that ‘we must move from a corporation, to a powerful Europe’. This has certainly opened up the decades old debate about whether the EU will build an army. For example, when Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac signed an agreement to build a European army in 1998, the Clinton Administration pushed back stating that NATO would become ‘a relic of the past’, increasing the chance of conflict between American and European states. It appears that the Franco-German alliance has opened up the conversation once again as many of their policies seem to be building a military force.
The three main EU defence agencies are PENSCO (military equipment supplier), Frontex (border control of the Schengen area) and NATOs Framework Nations Concept. Allies to Germany have already agreed to the integration of forces. The Czech have given the Bundeswehr Forces their fourth Rapid Development Brigade who served in Afghanistan. However, the Economist’s defence editor Shashank Joshi argues that this integration is only because previous units were “lacking in key capabilities”. He also states that an EU army would ‘probably be impossible without the UK if the US is absent’. Given Macron’s concern about the US, it is safe to assume that Brussels would want to cooperate with the UK despite Brexit, particularly concerning the Ukrainian situation. Due to the popularity of an EU armed forces among the French public; Macron may possibly be using the policy as a tool for public approval heading towards the French general elections. Ergo, joint EU armed forces are still very unlikely, especially considering that twenty PESCO projects had still not received funding by July 2021 and that six out of fifteen active projects have been severely delayed by the pandemic.
On the other hand, the integral changes to Frontext are pushing it further into the frames of being a neoliberal militia. Recently, it has (through its own initiative) aimed to target pre-frontier areas such as Turkey. It has also started to guard Gibraltar without Spanish police. Additionally, its spending sky-rocketed from €280 million in 2019 to €400 million in 2020. Consequently, its annual budget (2021-2027) has increased to €800 million. Remarkable, considering that Germany only spends 1.2% of GDP on EU defence despite the 2% requirement by NATO although by 2024, France is said to reach its 2% requirement and Germany will reach 1.5% respectively. The dramatic funding increase is due to Frontext being given the power to hire their own people and buy their own equipment rather than leasing them from member states.
On 11th January, Frontext tweeted: ‘For the first time, the European Union has its own uniformed service,’ ultimately solidifying its position as the EU’s new first-line of defence. If strategic autonomy was to be achieved; Frontext would be the force to do so.
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