Southern countries push for common EU defence policy

No complicated mufti-policies and a lot of wasted money /time Army anymore is needed!It's so easy to understand this but so difficult to need the will of doing so ! Perhaps the differed u.s. army should make an example to an e.u. army in what is an homogeneous uncomplicated one ...

Without a "defense superstate" should be said!

Why not begining with states wanted doing it so ...

@ ott

There is a serious flaw in your comparison.

The US is a country, the EU is not! How do you propose to square that circle?

I agree that there is room for maneuver with the agreement between the UK and France on drones and nuclear power as an example or the agreement between the Benelux countries.
The problem that you cannot solve is a lot of what you are suggesting requires political agreement. The countries in Europe cannot agree on Syria and I cannot remember when or if there has ever been unanimity among the 27 now 28.
You suggest giving up on separate Air Force commands. Which ones would you like to give up ott? Are you suggesting just one? Who is going to command that? What happens if a state like France needs to act in Mali? I am sure that you can see that this argument is already getting circular and we are back to the beginning again. As I said the USA doesn't have to worry about any of that because they are a nation.
I am not sure what you are referring to when you talk about shitty results, please expand.

You are being a bit harsh on the UK and France as they are 4th and 6th in the world when it comes to military spend. I think that the reason they needed the USA in Libya was more to do with the United Nations who did not give them permission to put boots or tanks on the ground. How many countries outside the USA could have done that on their own or even with assistance from others.

The big European country that is missing is Germany as they are only 9th in the league table. Even in NATO terms now that they are about to go to a professional military from conscription they need to stop beating themselves up about WWII, accept that the world no longer hates them and start pushing their weight on the world stage.

What you say makes a lot of sense if you take all the emotion out of the argument. Your statement "I do not deny the difficulty of reaching an agreement." is however the elephant in the room and the most you can hope for in December is a two speed defence policy. A bit like Schengen and the Euro.

We need a united European military force!
We, people of the EU, share not only borders, but values and culture too. It's natural to have a united defense too.
We already have NATO, the united military force the Western World. So, there no real grounds why we can not create a NATO-like military organization for the EU.

The mere idea of European harmonization is laughable. We have so many vastly different interests that bridging them is impossible. The UK and France have global outlooks and ambitions and consider the military a normal tool of foreign policy. The Eastern European states remain wary of Russia and focus on national defence and would prefer Europe (and NATO for that matter) to focus on that as well. And many other countries have simply no desire, economical and political capital to invest into a "global European military".
And Germany, my home country, has zero interest in engaging in further costly and pointless military adventures abroad ... especially when they continue to produce results far from satisfactory. For us Krauts military force is something that is only applicable in case of an attack and only as the very last resort. Hence the overwhelming apathy towards the constant reprimands by the US about our spending on defense. It's little wonder that the only two military interventions Germany ever participated in were hotly contested even in the then-governing coalition between SPD and Greens - and that both times party leaders had to blackmail their own parliamentary groups into compliance (Fischer by threatening to walk out of the Greens, Schroder by connecting it with a vote of confidence in the parliament).

Bottom line is germans as a whole have zero desire and interest in engaging militarily in every sh*thole that erupts into violence. The Bundeswehr and Germany's NATO membership were sold as entirely defensive in character to the population and this is how both are still seen today.

I agree on the harmonization but not under an umbrella of "global European military missions". I have no trouble with harmonizing European defense procurement (i.e. fewer MBT and IFV types, fewer fighter aircraft, simplification and communalization of naval vessels etc) but right now it's intermingled with the attempt to make all EU members take over the interventionist attitudes of France and the UK and this is where I disagree. Said attitude has gotten not only these two countries but the US and other states into the quagmires of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as well as drives part of the responses to Syria and has consistently failed to deliver results.

The major hurdle for greater defense industry integration is twofold: for starters there's an economic crisis around and integrating such high-tech pillars as defense companies may (almost certainly) cost jobs. Any politician with a modicum of career ambitions will try to avoid that. But secondly there's a massive disparity between member states when it comes to industry culture and state involvement. France, for example, is heavily involved in that area and considers this a question of national interest whereas Germany has fewer fingers in that pot and things such companies are better off being run privately. This (and previous negative experiences with Franco-German mergers) was primarily responsible for sinking the EADS/BAE merger.

Now, going back to the issue of strategy and posture, I think if the transatlanticist and interventionist bend of the CSDP were dropped in favor of true European defense planning (as in securing European territorial defense as primary goal) I guess there would be much more political enthusiasm and willingness to pool & share. Right now people see all those initiatives as thinly veiled attempts to involve all EU member states in more pointless quagmires abroad. Proper defense planning and harmonization are suffering because they're tied to something few european politicians really aspire.