Italian Foreign Minister calls for creation of EU army
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European defense cooperation has surged to the top of the political agenda since the war in Ukraine began nearly two years ago, but efforts have been concentrated more on expanding NATO.
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Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani greets reporters as he leaves a press conference with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry in Cairo Egypt on January 22, 2023. (AP)
According to Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, the European Union should create its own joint army to aid in peacekeeping and conflict prevention.
Tajani told the Italian newspaper La Stampa that better European defense cooperation was a top objective for his Forza Italia party, explaining that to have an effective European foreign policy and to be "peacekeepers in the world, we need a European military."
"In a world with powerful players like the United States, China, India, Russia - with crises from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific - Italian, German, French or Slovenian citizens can only be protected by something that already exists, namely the European Union," he said.
European defense cooperation has surged to the top of the political agenda since the war in Ukraine began nearly two years ago, but efforts have been concentrated more on expanding NATO, with EU member Finland joining the alliance last year and Sweden on course to join as well.
Tajani also suggested that the EU's 27-nation leadership be streamlined into a single presidency, rather than the present system of a European Council president and a European Commission president.
Tajani took over Forza Italia after the death of former leader Silvio Berlusconi last year.
Elections to the European Parliament in June will be the first test of the party's appeal since the death of its popular former leader.
Last year in May, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described the war in Ukraine as a "laboratory testing ground" for the military capabilities of the European Union from which they can learn and improve their military.
"This war [the conflict in Ukraine] unfortunately has been a bit of a laboratory testing ground for our capabilities our priorities. We have to see what lessons we have learned from this so as to ensure we have a greater and better capability of European defense in the future," Borrell said at a press conference following a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.
At the time, Borrell revealed the EU had supplied Kiev with 220,000 artillery ammunition and 1,300 missiles since the start of the war.
