Brexit ‘opens way for EU to set up its own army’

THE Brexit vote has removed the last obstacle to forming a European Army, said the chief of Brussels foreign policy yesterday.

Federica Mogherini said the EU could storm ‘one of the last bastions of national sovereignty’ because of the Leave victory.

The Italian, a former communist, said Britain leaving the EU meant there were no more excuses not to push ahead with closer defence co-operation.

However, former communist states in Eastern Europe are likely to be nervous about how the plan could undermine Nato.

They have warned that they are preparing a post-Brexit ‘counter-revolution’ to assert the power of national governments in Brussels.

Miss Mogherini insisted that EU leaders should exploit the ‘window of opportunity’ opened by Brexit to revive plans for a joint European military force based in Brussels that were shelved more than 60 years ago.

‘For the first time since the death of the European Defence Community in 1954, I believe a window of opportunity has been opened to give life to a European defence,’ she told Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

Miss Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said her timing was deliberate to ‘send the message that, despite the British defection, Europe can and must move forward with integration’.

She added: ‘I see this as a sea change. After the EDC failed in the 1950s, many governments were convinced that the military was one of the last bastions of national sovereignty.

‘Many people thought that the prospect of Brexit offered an opportunity not to be slowed by the country that was always most determinedly opposed to the idea of pooling the instruments of defence. My feeling is that the future exit of Great Britain from the EU has removed a convenient alibi behind which many hid.’

Miss Mogherini, who is also vicepresident of the European Commission, refused to use the term ‘EU army’ but her plans reveal it is that in all but name.

Troops from different EU members have already started training together in combined ‘battle groups’ but have not so far been deployed. ‘We can and we must decide to make them an asset to be used when we need a rapid European intervention,’ said the former Italian foreign minister.

She pledged to create ‘a common headquarters in Brussels that would run all present and future military and civilian operations’.

Miss Mogherini said: ‘This could become the nucleus around which a common European defence structure could be built.’

She added that European governments should also start ‘pooling resources for the gigantic investments needed in defence’.

Miss Mogherini claimed there was a post-Brexit ‘general consensus on the need to move forward in this field’. She added: ‘If you look at opinion polls, the principal concerns of Europeans are the economy and security. Internal security implies also an external dimension, a defence capacity. Let’s start now.’

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker will formally announce the plans to MEPs in Strasbourg next Wednesday.

This will be followed by a meeting of the 27 EU leaders who will remain after Brexit in the Slovakian capital Bratislava on Friday.

At this summit, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, an influential bloc known as the Visegrad Group, will lobby for national governments to be put back in the EU’s driving seat.

Hungary’s Viktor Orban has vowed to push the EU towards policies based on preserving ‘historic, religious and national identity’.