Military of the European Union

The European Union is not a state and does not have its own dedicated military forces, although there are a number of multi-national military and peacekeeping forces which are ultimately under the command of the EU. An early attempt (1952) to form a European Defence Community failed, and no similar project has been proposed since. As some of the 27 EU member states are also members of NATO, some EU states cooperate on defense policy (collective security) albeit primarily through NATO rather than through the EU or aligned group (such as the Western European Union). However, the memberships of the EU, WEU, and NATO are distinct, and some EU member states are constitutionally committed to remain neutral on defence issues. Several of the new EU member states were formerly members of the Warsaw Pact.

One of the issues that the European Constitution, which currently possesses an uncertain future, was going to address would have closed down the WEU as a separate organisation and have the EU institutions take on the WEU's defence role. The EU currently has a limited mandate over defence issues, with a role to explore the issue of European defence agreed to in the Amsterdam Treaty, as well as oversight of the European Rapid Reaction Force. However, some EU states may and do make multilateral agreements about defence issues outside of the EU structures.

On the 23 of March, 2007, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country held the EU presidency at that time, gave an interview in celebration of the EU's fiftieth birthday, in which she expressed the desire for a unified EU Army.[1]

Co-operation

The EU primarily acts through its Common Foreign and Security Policy, though Denmark has an opt-out from this and some states are limited by neutrality issues. As a result forces under EU command have been for peacekeeping, which European states have a great deal of experience in.

See also the European Security and Defence Policy.

If all the member states' annual spending was taken as a bloc the figure would amount to over $292.7 billion, second only to the US military's $518 billion. ^[1] However the cumulative effect is much less than it seems due to duplication of capacities in individual militaries. There have been efforts to overcome this with joint projects such as the Eurofighter and through joint procurement of equipment

Deployment

In 2004 EU countries took over leadership of the mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina from NATO through the European Union Force (EUFOR). The mission was given the branding of an EU initiative as the EU sponsored the force to further the force's image of legitimacy. There have been other deployments such as in Gaza and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Recently the European High Representative for Foreign Policy Javier Solana has indicated the EU could send troops to Georgia, perhaps alongside Russian forces.^[2]

See pages of individual forces below for details or ESDP Deployments.

Military forces and groups

EUFOR (peacekeeping force composed of 7.000 troops stationed in Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Eurocorps (independent military force composed of 60.000 troops that can be deployed for various missions)
Eurofor (rapid reaction force under command of the Western European Union)
European Gendarmerie Force (crisis intervention force composed of 900 personnel, with 2.300 additional personnel that can be deployed as reinforcements)
Helsinki Headline Goal (listing of rapid reaction forces composed of 60.000 troops managed by the European Union, but under control of the countries who deliver troops for it)
European Union Battlegroups (closest thing to an EU military, composed of 15 battlegroups, each one numbering 1.500 troops)
European Union Military Staff (supervises military operations carried out by the EU)

Actors, agencies and policies

Defence Budgets of Member States

US$ billion

The hypothetically united EU military budget
compared with other major military powers.

Rank		Defence Budget (USD)
1	UK	72,800,000,000
2	France	64,611,000,000
3	Germany	57,500,000,000
4	Italy	32,093,537,000
5	Spain	15,792,207,000
6	Netherlands	10,369,920,000
7	Greece	7,648,561,000
8	Poland	7,262,500,000
9	Sweden	6,309,137,714
10	Belgium	3,999,000,000
11	Portugal	3,497,800,000
12	Denmark	3,271,600,000
13	Romania	2,900,000,000
14	Finland	2,800,000,000
15	Austria	2,334,900,000
16	Czech Republic	2,170,000,000
17	Ireland	1,300,000,000
18	Hungary	1,080,000,000
22	Bulgaria	730,000,000
20	Slovakia	406,000,000
21	Cyprus	384,000,000
22	Slovenia	370,000,000
23	Luxembourg	231,600,000
24	Lithuania	230,800,000
25	Estonia	155,000,000
26	Latvia	87,000,000
27	Malta	44,640,000